Quite a day yesterday.

I had quite the day yesterday evening.

I found a primo new Obama button at the African-goods store where I get my Obama buttons (I'm always having to get new ones, since somehow I always find myself selling at cost the one I have on to different people) -- it's a picture of Barack and Michelle fist-bumping on a blue background above the words

"YES, WE CAN!"

and the quote marks are on the button too, they're just not something I'm putting around the phrase in my blog.

I was talking with Sister Rose who runs the store, too, and she was saying how horrible it is that Palin keeps spreading lies and stirring up hate, and that it shows how bad McCain is because he doesn't stop her.

We were standing by the door talking, too -- she kept calling me "Precious", by the way, but since she has some accent, she would often say "Pwecious" -- and some (black) friend of hers walked by with this young kid and a little shih-tzu on a leash, and Sister Rose was like, "So is this your boy!?!?!?", and somehow the lady too called the dog her joy, so I was like, "That's cool, here you are with your boy and your joy," and both laughed, and I said good evening to both of them.

After that, since it was a nice night, I took a bike ride, and the drummers were out at the beach ten blocks south of me. I had passed them before but never stopped, so I did this time... It was four (black) guys with big bongo drums each keeping a beat and improvising, while this one (black) dude improvised on flute and every once in a while paused to shout "Yeah!" or "Play it!" or, when this one young black lady with a baseball cap that was actually a white woven hairnet with a baseball cap brim started dancing, "Dance on, sister, you're burning up!" It was very nice, and very black. One (black) guy had his lawnchair out, and some other (black) people had brought out a big thermos and were having hot chocoloate and just listening to the drums. Someone had told me that it's a great place to be in the summer, since you can go for a swim all day and then get an ice cream from the beach foodstand and then go listen to the drums when it's evening.

Later, I was going to the bar to meet a friend for a drink, when I ran into my neighbor, Lars. Last time I had run into him it was a Monday and he was pretty hammered and was heading off to band practice, and this time I ran into him he was coming back from the bar and had a six-pack of Miller Highlife in a brown paper bag, so since we hadn't caught up in a while, we went to his place and drank a few while he played me some music of this band he's been playing with.

He also mentioned that he gets like four-and-a-half or five hours of sleep a night, since he pretty much drinks eight beers per evening and smokes a ton of pot and then pretty much plays guitar till twelve or one, then he's up five or six to get ready to go in for his job.

He also said his big Swedish grandfather who lives in the U.P. is an alcoholic, and drinks a fifth a day of vodka or brandy, and that's not counting beers, since according to his grandfather beer isn't alcohol.

("I take after that side of the family with drinking," he was like, "they're total Swedes, though I don't look anything like them, I take after my mom.")

In between, too, he was talking about how worried he is because of the economy, since he's already lost $3,000 in stocks (he doesn't even bother to check their worth anymore) and he's just not sure what's going to happen with his Roth IRA.

It was getting time them to head to the bar to meet my friend, and I ran into a girl who had gone with me once to see hipster karaoke, and she kept gushing about it, and was saying how her and her husband want to go back, it was so much fun, that the one roller girl who was there not only had tattoos all over but also blood all over her jersey since she had just come from a match, and then she added that when they were in Hawaii this summer visiting her sister they decided to do "Waterfalls" after seeing it done at hipster karaoke by two guys and enjoying it so much (personally, I remember the guys's version being jackass-y, to be perfectly honest), and though her and her husband sucked, her sister nailed the rap, and then when her husband sang "The Safety Dance" like he always does at karaoke and nailed it, the owner came running out to him from back in back holding this karaoke book out in front of him and was like, "Please take a look at the secret book!"

"What?", I was like.

"Oh," the girl was like, "They have a secret book at this place, filled with all the good songs that stupid people usually sing and do bad at, so they took them out of circulation and keep them a secret just for the good people."

"Oh," I was like, "That's cool. You means shit lke 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' and 'Living on a Prayer'?"

"Yeah," she was like, "the book had a lot of Bon Jovi. My sister was pissed, too, since she's been going there for years and didn't know anything about a secret book."

Later, we all decamped to a stoner party where I played Guitar Hero against a hipster, this skinny guy with bicycle pants a nose-ring like a bull. He played expert and I played medium, and I beat him on the second round, and he was like, "Dude, so this is your first time playing this today?", and when I told him yeah, but that I was only beating him on medium level, he was like, "But you don't understand, I've been playing this for years."

Previous to that on the way to the party, I also passed by my one friend's apartment building and she was right by the window at her computer, so I called to her and she came to the window and was telling me about this awesome play she had just seen with some people, and then finally she was like, "You should go now, or you'll get raped," since a woman had just gotten raped in the garbage room of the building next door the previous night.

I did go, then, but then the rest of the night I kept texting her things like, "[her name], help please, I am being raped. Ah!", and then when she had replied with "You fuckwit," "Oh please [her name], help, the more you are sarcastic the more I am hurting. Ah!", to which she responded, "I am ashamed at myself for finding this remotely funny."

Today as well, I texted her, "i know it's not my fault but i feel so ashamed," and later maybe I'll write her something about wanting to take a bath all the time.

Kiss of Death / Rumor.

I've come to realize that when I'm asked about someone who I don't like and I try to be diplomatic and I'm like, "Oh, they're all right", that that's the kiss of death, because I don't display my usual enthusiasm. The other day that happened and my one (white) southern friend was like, "Oh, why don't you like them?"

Also, last week someone told me that Sarah Palin has a tanning bed in her house, so this week I'm trying to bring this up everywhere in conversation, though I'm not sure if it's true or not. People are sure believing it, though.

Stoners.

That wall-eyed stoner girl who lives diagonally above me struck again last night, and started playing foosball at like 10pm, just when I was going to go to bed (it's been a long week, I was trying to go to bed early so I'd be up fresh tomorrow). I went up to knock on the door, and she shouted bitchily from inside, "Come in, the door's open," so I kind of opened the door and just stood against the frame while her and her chunky white friend and this one scrawny bearded undergrad who's her neighbord kind of filed out, so I was like, "Hi," then they were like, "Hi," and I just stood there looking, but because what can you say after you've talked with them like ten times over the course of last year and they still don't give a fuck? After like ten seconds of that, the wall-eyed stoner girl, just cocked her head and stared back, to mock me.

(Last week when I had like four heavy bags of grocery and had to set them all down to open the front door, she was standing by the front door and wouldn't open it for me, and just ignored my presence. That's the difference between her and me, I would have opened the door for her, despite my vendetta, since I'm not an asshole, or at least I'm selective about when I'm an asshole.)

Anyhow, when I started off and was like, "It's late and I want to go to bed, so can you stop playing foosball?" the one girl was like, "We had agreed that we could play until 10pm, let us finish our game," and when I asked what agreement, the scrawny kid was like, "What do you mean what agreement, you're an asshole," since they had told the landlord that we had resolved the problem among ourselves and that they could play all they wanted till 10pm every night.

(One night when I came up there and it was the girl and her boyfriend, her boyfriend, this scrawny guy with a scraggly beard and a ponytail and a leather jacket and piercings, tried to be big man and negotiate for the 10pm thing and was like, "Hey man, we all got to compromise," but I went off, the only time I've ever done that with them, and was like, "My position is that foosball tables don't belong in apartment buildings, so find a compromise with that," and then told them that if they want to be undergrads and stay up till all hours and play foosball or whatever the fuck they do, just move back to the dorm, but if they want to live in an adult apartment building, they should behave like adults. But, I guess they were so stoned they somehow we agreed on the 10pm thing, since they genuinely seemed shocked that I denied it?)

So, anyhow, I told them I was calling the landlord since we had never made an agreement and it was noisy and I was going to bed, and said good night to them, and since I was pissed about being called an asshole, I called her up right then, which maybe I shouldn't have. When I first talked with her, she thought I hadn't talked with them, and suggested calling the police or going myself to talk with them, but then when I explained that I had and that they had said that we had negotiated a 10pm thing, which was completely false, she said she'd call today.

What a mess, I feel in this whole thing that these kids aren't adults, I should be talking with their parents. Tonight I'm checking my lease about a noise policy and then tomorrow I'll call the landlord to find out what the deal is. These kids are nuts, they don't give a fuck and just do whatever they want. Stoners are like that, they're always like, "Hey man, it's okay," since it's okay for them. I think overall that stoners are the most obliviously selfish group of people that I know.

Bananas / Vengeance.

The other week I was walking down the main avenue downtown jauntily eating a banana when a (black) older homeless guy shouted out at me as I was preparing to walk past him, "Hey, where's a banana for me?", and since I happened to have an extra banana as well as an orange in my bag, I stopped and told him that I had them, and asked him if he wanted them, and since he did, I gave them to him.

"Thank you," he was like, as he took the banana, then as he was placing them in his zip-up sack he had with him, he leaned in very teacherly-like and was like, "This here is full of potassium, it's good for you!"

On another note, I was thinking the other day about how morally corrupting New York financial culture is, and how at the end of the summer when I was there and I looked up a college acquaintance who now works for a hedge fund, he was blatantly saying he didn't think about the future, only about him and his family since we won't be here in 50 years anyhow, and when his chunky Asian wife dropped by, she was dripping with designer labels and condescension for the two seconds I talked with her, despite the fact that we were talking about the educational non-profit she worked for, which you think would have been the one topic that would have made me somehow respect her, but it didn't at all.

But, when they left the cute little cafe where we had met for coffee, they said they were walking home through their neighborhood by back streets, since they hated walking on the main street near them because of all the rowdiness, which was their euphemism for all the black transvestites and trannie-chasers there, who have been hanging out on that street for years despite the neighborhood's gentrification, so every time you walk by they proposition you or try to sell you drugs or are getting in fights that end up involving passers-by because they're all these cracked-out women out trying to prove which one is fiercer and are being all like, "Bitch, don't you be coming here no more."

Anyhow, when I explained that the acquaintance and his wife avoided them like all hell to my friend in that neighborhood I was staying with, she was like, "Of course they are, they're annoying as all hell, you wouldn't think they're cute if you woke up at 5am every weekend when they're out on the streets yelling at the top of their lungs," and then she mentioned that none of them are actually from NYC, they all come in every night from New Jersey to the transit station right there, so the neighborhood will never be rid of them. That made me so happy, to think of how all these rowdy black transvestites and their johns will always be ruining the douche-y financier designer cafe life of my acquaintance and his chunky Asian wife.

Conservative Jews.

So, last weekend I met a friend of a friend, who's Jewish and is originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, but now lives in South Florida and has been campaigning for Obama there as well, and she was really hammered and going on and on about how liberal a lot of secularized Jews like her family tend to be, though they're conservative in some things, but she couldn't give any examples of conservativeness right after she said this and so paused in her monologue to rethink her position out loud and so was like, "Wait, we're liberal with health care, we're liberal with labor reform, we're liberal with abortion, we're liberal with a lot of things, so I don't know what we're conservative about -- maybe the way we dress?"

Killed a bug this weekend.

So when I got in the shower like 12:30pm Saturday night (actually early Sunday morning, by that time), I turned around to get my shampoo bar off the soapdish on the ledge in the showerstall, and I saw this three-inch silverfish weighed down with water drops from the shower desperately trying to heave itself up the side of the bathtub. Last time there was a small one in the tub I killed it with the heal of my foot as an act of self-discipline of the flesh - what does it matter to me to kill a bug with my bare foot, so long as my foot isn't injured by it? - but this one was way too thick and juicy and I was a little too afraid of it, so I grabbed my soap-dish and mashed it to pieces and then flushed it down the drain.

Augustine's meditational techniques.

So, there's this big debate about what genre Augustine's "Confessions" are, especially since they're framed as him addressing God, and peter out from autobiography/relation of his life into a reflection on sense knowledge and other topics in Book X, and then an exegesis of the beginning of Genesis in Books XI-XIII. What most people end up saying is that it's a prayer ending with Augustine finding true knowledge of himself in God, as far as he is able in this lifetime.

Anyhow, re-reading this this weekend for class, what I found most interesting was that at the end of the bulk of Book X, Augustine suddenly springs it on the reader that his discussion of sense knowledge and innate ideas leading into discussion of what God is and is not is actually a meditational technique that he's practiced:

Where hast Thou not walked with me, O Truth, teaching me what to beware, and what to desire; when I referred to Thee what I could discover here below, and consulted Thee? With my outward senses, as I might, I surveyed the world, and observed the life, which my body hath from me, and these my senses. Thence entered I the recesses of my memory, those manifold and spacious chambers, wonderfully furnished with innumerable stores; and I considered, and stood aghast; being able to discern nothing of these things without Thee, and finding none of them to be Thee. Nor was I myself, who found out these things, who went over them all, and laboured to distinguish and to value every thing according to its dignity, taking some things upon the report of my senses, questioning about others which I felt to be mingled with myself, numbering and distinguishing the reporters themselves, and in the large treasure-house of my memory revolving some things, storing up others, drawing out others. Nor yet was I myself when I did this, i.e., that my power whereby I did it, neither was it Thou, for Thou art the abiding light, which I consulted concerning all these, whether they were, what they were, and how to be valued; and I heard Thee directing and commanding me; and this I often do, this delights me, and as far as I may be freed from necessary duties, unto this pleasure have I recourse. Nor in all these which I run over consulting Thee can I find any safe place for my soul, but in Thee; whither my scattered members may be gathered, and nothing of me depart from Thee. And sometimes Thou admittest me to an affection, very unusual, in my inmost soul; rising to a strange sweetness, which if it were perfected in me, I know not what in it would not belong to the life to come. But through my miserable encumbrances I sink down again into these lower things, and am swept back by former custom, and am held, and greatly weep, but am greatly held. So much doth the burden of a bad custom weigh us down. Here I can stay, but would not; there I would, but cannot; both ways, miserable.

This translation is shitty, but it does give some sense of it; skimming Book X in a better translation such as that of F.J. Sheed and then reflecting on this passage gives a better one.

Interesting, too, is how reading Scripture was the same sort of thing, and so Augustine is doing participatory/exemplary meditation both here and in the extended exegesis that makes up the last three books of the "Confessions". People don't credit him enough for this -- the "Confessions" was an audience-participation book hopefully leading to the redemption of the reader.