3 things: testing, dream, weird guy.

1) I proctored another standardized test this morning. Some middle-school kids took it too, and there was this really cute and self-confident girl of Chinese dissent who was full of personality without being too much. She was always like, "Thanks!" whenever you handed her an answer sheet/test booklet/etc., and handled herself well with no parent in sight.

She was a ton better than the parent-dominated young boy with long blonde hair and a cap on (the yuppie dad in a biking suit took care of everything and the kid never spoked, and he corrected me when I said "she" or "her" or something), and the mom in a leather jacket with a leather purse who was bitching about her kid not being taught cursive in his gifted-and-talented program at school, and then during the test instructions the kid made a point of asking something after every bit, and then during the testing itself sighing loudly whenever "five minutes left" was announced, and then asking at the end when the whole test was over why they couldn't have more time on each section.

2) I had a dream last night that I was at the Bates motel, only Norman Bates was married and he and his wife both tortured people, including this woman who was strapped to a gurney and who they would get pregnant and then carve our her fetus. I managed to escape up the road and get up the driveway of a house on a hill just when this gruff white-bearded old guy in a leather bikers jacket was leaving on a motorcycle, and he gave me a ride to wherever he was going, though we crested a hill and there laying below us was Manhattan. I finally broke down when he dropped me off at a bus station what had happened, and at that point he was a early 30s-something Puerto Rican girl who kind of looked like a model, only not stringy, and her friend, and they felt sorry for me and said I could stay with one of them's parents.

3) So, my one friend who works at the library reported back that the werid Asian guy had had multiple incidents, including "belligerent gum-snapping" at the science library and this incident in the stacks of the main library where the guy complained to a stacks-shifting project employee that they were making too much noise, and then he started overturning bookcarts and throwing books everywhere. He also said he was an alumnus of the college back in the early 2000s, so that's how he had been getting into the library post-graduation, with the standard alumnus stacks-privileges pass.

Cabbage / Free soul food.

Today I was eating some cabbage salad at lunch and reading, and I coughed, and bits of chewed-up cabbage flew out and covered the pages of the book I was reading.

Yesterday just when I was about to leave the library, a (white) friend texted me that the minority students association on campus was having a free buffet-style soul food dinner, so I stuck around like a half hour and then we headed over, to find that there was indeed a huge free buffet-style soul food dinner, as well as a lot of other clusters of white and Asian kids (no hispanics, though, really) in line to get the free chicken.

"Man, I am dying," I was like, when we were finally close to the food, and the (black) (female) student ahead of me laughed.

Later, when the line was even longer, I considered going up for seconds, but I didn't want to deprive anyone, so I just went up for salad, since it was at the end of the line between the hot food and the plate of cornbread muffins, and no one was touching.

"You mind if I slip in here and grab some salad?", I asked this other (black) (female) student who was just finishing the hot food line. "I really want some more mac and cheese, but I've already had some, so I'm thinking I'll get some salad since no one wants that."

"Go right ahead!", she was like. "I sure don't."

Then, when she went for the cornbread muffins, I was like, "Be careful, they're dry!", and she turned back to me and flashed a smile and was like, "Thanks!", and then left without getting one.

Later, at the very end of the night when there was like no line, I went up to get whatever food was left, and I sidled up beside yet another (black) (female) student and was like, "Man, I wanted to get some more mac and cheese earlier, but I didn't want to deprive anyone, and now it's all gone."

"That's nice of you," she was like, and then, staring morosely at the huge plate of leftover rice and the little bit of beans left and the trays of grease from the now-gone mac and cheese and the grease from the now-gone catfish and the grease and juice from the now-gone chicken and the juice from the now-gone collard greens, she was like, "'Cause we sure are deprived."

2 updates - Mormons, crazy guy.

I went out for a drinks after a movie last night with a friend who works in the library. He said he's been reading Mormon blogs again, and that this one 20-something housewife was upset and trying to get her friends to start a letter-writing campaign to Fox because the Dollhouse preview shown during the Superbowl ended with a naked silhouette of a prone Eliza Dushku.

He also said that he knows exactly who that one weird Asian guy who reads out loud in the one otherwise-quiet student lounge is. He said when he started work at the library, his supervisor made him read like 12 security files of people to call security on on sight, and though four of them were like some 10-year olds who were trespassing and causing a ruckus like 5 years ago, this guy was one of the other ones, and for some reason his profile stuck out in his head. This guy, he said, was caught being weirdly passive-aggressive and threatening to patrons after they asked him not to bang the keys on a keyboard in the science library computer room one time, and there were a few other incidents as well, though he can't remember what, and that one time he did appear inside the main library where my friend works and my friend immediately called security, but by the time security got there, the guy was gone.

He added that it's extremely tough to get kicked out of the libraries and have all your privileges revoked, and he thinks that the guy must have been an alumni of some sort at one time, since alumni have free reference privileges and borrowing privileges for $75 a year. He said he was going to pull his guy's file again today and see what else was in there, and he'd let me know.

He also said that there's some real crazies who come out for the book sale, when anyone from the larger community can be buzzed in to the library to go to the old book room. This fall, he said, this one lady said she was researching how the current head of the EU, who's also the anti-Christ, received special training at our university, but she didn't know what, though she was trying like all hell to figure it out.

Magazines / Academics / Being confrontational.

Last night when I passed the Walgreen's here the flashing sign out front said

4 NEW OBAMA
MAGAZINES
NOW IN STOCK

I was realizing today when I was reading a ton of related books for my qualifying exams that you think that reading a ton of primary sources would make academics original, but instead they just parrot each other endlessly, repeating the most correct formulas and descriptions that other people have come up with, and knowing an area well is to be able to pick those phrases out.

Today I pissed off another weird library user -- or, to be more accurate, reading room user. In the one undergrad social club building on campus, there's this lovely first floor room with big windows that's a quiet study room where you can hear a pin drop, and a lot of grad students go there, since even the undergrads are respectful of the quiet there and don't horse around or answer their cellphones or bullshit like that.

But, since I've started going there the past couple weeks, I've discovered there's this nicely-dressed mid-20s Asian guy with a bowl haircut and a bookstand who comes in during the afternoons and sits in a corner, and he reads articles out loud for hours on end so, if he's on the louder side, you can hear him enunciating Kant from like 25 feet across the room. The first time I ever saw him doing that, I asked this (white) undergrad girl at the table where I was working what was up with that, and she was like, "I have no idea, but he sure comes in here a lot."

So, today I was in there studying, and this Asian dude comes in -- his eyes aren't straight, by the way -- and he starts reading out loud, so I walked across the room and asked him if he could either read silently or go upstairs to the undergrad coffee shop/lounge area or to the bagel place to study, since he was disturbing people who wanted to study in silence.

"I will read more quietly," he was like, and he began glaring at me.

"That's very inconsiderate to other patrons," I was like, "People come here since it's a very quiet room."

"It wasn't quiet this summer!", he was like, and then, "I will read more quietly," and as I backed off, this Asian undergrad girl mouthed "thank you" at me, and a couple other people gave me a thumbs up.

Like ten or twelve minutes later, though, this dude started reading very loudly again so I could hear him on the other side of the room, so I looked up and happened to catch the eyes of two white girls on a couch near me (one in a med school sweatshirt) and they just shrugged and made a face like he was crazy, but since I was a bit pissed, I took my book -- Peter Brown's "Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity", which I had read through and was now taking notes on -- and went over, pulled out the chair next to this dude, and began reading outloud in between taking my notes.

I did this for like ten minutes or so, and he would raise his voice to counter mine, and the funny part was that like twice in my book Peter Brown quotes a French scholar without translation and I happened to hit those parts, so I actually had not only to read out loud, but also to read French out loud, and fake a French accent.

Then, I got tired with that and went to sit down, and as I was going to my table the girl in the med school sweatshirt made this thankful applause motion to me as I went by.

This jackass kept on reading, though, but more quietly, so I was able to get my work done, though like a half hour later when the med school sweatshirt girl left, she dropped a note on his table, I take it, because the guy picked it up, and raised his voice and read it out loud for the entire room to hear, and it was something to the effect that she thought his behavior was inappropriate since this is the quietest place to study on campus, even quieter than the main library and the undergrad library and the science library, and he's inconsiderately ruining it for the rest of everyone.

This dude then threw the letter down on the table, and was like, "And what is this? I have a cousin who received a doctorate in Classics from Marquette University. I have another cousin who received a law degree from American University. What would he say to this note?", and other crazy shit like that.

Like five minutes later, I was done reading and note-taking, so I left, and that dude was still there.

On the way to the gym, I ran into this one undergrad I know from circ, this half Puerto-Rican guy who's a hulking punk kid with a big bushy black beard and who often carries a skateboard.

"What's up?", I was like.

"Just walking around campus, dude" he said.

"Oh, are you stoned?", I was like.

"Not right now," he was like.

I then told him about my confrontation, which he thought was awesome. "You totally were marking your territory!", he was like, and he said that he was going to take his Hittite there sometime and read it out loud as he did his translation.

He then was like, too, "How is Viriginia Tech like the North Pole?", and when I didn't know, he was like, "They're both minus thirty-two degrees," which took me a minute to get.

The Yellow and the Purple.

The other day I was in my dining room and I looked down at the wainscotting, and there was this weird yellow waxy shit almost like bad earwax sitting on top of it for a stretch of like two inches. I had to get a sponge out of the sink and scrub it off, and I still have no idea what the fuck it was. You think I would have seen it when I cleaned my apartment top-to-bottom a few weeks ago (dusted the wainscotting then), but somehow I didn't -- or is it new?

The other week I really, really pissed off a woman on the first floor of the library. She's this short woman in her mid-40s who seems half-Asian half-white (looks Asian, but her eyes aren't that slanted), who has her shorter-haircut dyed with big purple swathes, and walks around wearing black tops and skirts and high boots and colorful scarves.

The thing was, is that computers on the first floor are in high demand, and there wasn't one open, and when I went to one that was free, there was a backpack on the chair "saving" it, but the screen had re-set and the computer logged off, so that meant that the computer had not been sitting idle for at least 15 minutes. I sat down and had been using it for like 10 minutes (=25 minutes since the user had left the computer, almost a half hour of a computer sitting idle during peak usage time when everyone wants a computer!), when that woman walks up and is like, "Excuse me, I was using that."

I then told her that it was idle and it had reset, so I did nothing to her computer, and none other was available, so she should wait and she was like, "But I saved it, I was downstairs getting coffee and ran into a friend and talked for a while, that's all."

I then told her that that's happened to me too, but I've never had a computer reset on me, and that she should wait for another computer, since I've talked with a person at the reference desk before when this has happened at peak usage time, and that that person had said logged-off computers where people's shit is sitting out is fair game to use.

She then started having a break-down loudly and people were looking at us, and she was saying more shit about how insensitive I was, so I was like, "Pardon me, but if you have a problem, I'd be more than happy to go talk with a supervisor with you. Let's go right now, we can double-check on their policy"

At that point, she then asked me if she could send the files she was working on to herself so she could start working again when another computer freed up, and like 10 minutes after she sat down to get her files e-mailed (it was taking her forever), a computer opened up at the next terminal-cluster, so I was like, "Okay, it's yours, I'll just move over there."

I still see her around campus a lot. I think she hates me.

A happy thing.

This afternoon when I was coming out of the gym it was a sunny winter day and while I was standing at the corner, this short, plump-ish, in her 30s Mexican woman in a pickup truck with done-up blonde-tinted hair rolled by with Mexican music blaring, and her hand out the window with a cigarette. It made me so happy.

Nothing.

I needed to post a blog post tonight so I don't have a two-day gap (I hate that), but my mind is completely blank. I have nothing to say, nothing.