The other day when I was talking with a (black) faculty assistant friend, I used the word "rejigger", and she was like, "What?", and I defined it as tinkering around till something works again, like you jigger with something first, and then it breaks down, so you rejigger with it till you get it going again, and it wasn't until later in the day when I used the word a second time (because it had been on my mind, likely), that I realized she probably thought it was racial, and that I explained the word naively she just let it go, probably since she had never heard it before either.
Anyhow, I just OEDed it and there's no derivation, so I'm not sure if I was in the wrong or not. I'll have to talk with her next week and see if that is indeed what she thought, and whether I should stop using it.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Addendum.
I forgot -
Herbert also was saying that people only put a black man in charge of shit when it's bad, and then when things turn around, they put a white person back in power.
He had like ten examples, and talked about this for quite some time.
Herbert also was saying that people only put a black man in charge of shit when it's bad, and then when things turn around, they put a white person back in power.
He had like ten examples, and talked about this for quite some time.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Went to the black neighborhood bar last night.
So, last night I went to the black neighborhood bar, which rumor has, but has never confirmed, also serves as the local gay bar for guys on the "down-low".
I went to grab a seat at the bar and have a drink and read my mafia book, and like the only one open was to the left of these two raucous (black) guys, both in their late 50s or so, and the one sitting next to me touched my arm when I sat down and was like, "Hey man, how you doing?", and then stopped his conversation with his friend to ask me about my book, and I told them about how the Italian mafia takes bribes from factories that produce toxic waste and then mix that shit in with the cement on their construction projects so they can take low bids.
After that, we all talked, and I got to reading, and after the guy next to me got up to go the restroom - he was tall and with a shaved head and an earring in each ear, and had an orange shirt on - the other guy - shorter, fatter, small moustache, and a National Guard baseball hat on - was like, "I didn't even know that guy before I came in and sat down," though he proceeded to tell me the story about how when he came in the guy was like, "I know you from somewhere," and it turns out that they're both from the first graduating class (200+) of some Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., high school around here that was built in the early 70s.
Later, that dude left, and then the original dude left, but not before swigging back each of his cans of PBR on the bar, to make sure nothing was left.
So, I read a little more, and then the dude next to me, this one older (black) guy in a brown suit with a black beret on who kind of looked a little like Al Sharpton with short hair, and scrawny ("Herbert") turns to me and starts talking and saying how this bar is "the best joint in the zip code," for the service, the ambience, the music, etc.
So, we talked a bit about other bars, and I defended the student bar for how they poured the cheap whiskey heavy, and he said that after the black neighborhood bar got the automatic pour-stopper, business has been down like 60%, but it's coming back little by little.
"How long ago was that?", I was like.
"Oh, like four to five years ago," he said.
Then we started talking about the music, and he said it was because they had an online jukebox, but I said that that wasn't it, because I've been in places where there's the same jukebox but people play shit, and that it was the people with good taste doing the selecting that made the difference, and he kind of agreed, and then I compared that to karaoke, and he accused me of being judgmental about karaoke.
"You can't go in being all judgmental about who's singing, you are there to have fun," he was like, and I disagreed and said that some people are drunk assholes, and then he was like, "But no, it's like when you pull into a highway rest-stop and you go on the side that says 'Trucks Only', you don't know what you're going to get, you just have to be open."
I took that in stride and then we talked more about the neighborhood and he started saying it was going so downhill that you couldn't even buy a suit anymore in the neighborhood, or even between there and downtown.
"You can't even buy a suit," he was like.
I then mentioned it was nice to have the president around, and he said that it wasn't, because they close the street for like a mile up and down whenever people are in town.
Then we started talking about the Olympic bid the city has, and how it would dislocate the neighborhood to have that in here, and how anyways they should put it further south in the parts of the city where there's the industrial brownfields, otherwise no one would clean it up.
"And imagine," he was like, "When the World Cup was here and when the Rolling Stones played fans from all over the world were walking across the highways and blocking traffic, and that happens here? Shit."
Then, all of a sudden, he was like, "And Obama would come in the middle of all that, and they'd have to tow all those cars? I'd like to see that."
From there he started talking shit about Michelle Obama and how she was the sole author of this recently-uncovered document shunting poor people from the neighborhood away from the emergency rooms of university hospitals and to the main county hospital way downtown, and from there moved on to peanuts, and gestured with his hand broadly.
Now, I thought he meant the peanuts machine in the back of the room, because last time I had gotten some from that they were kind of stale, but it turns out he meant Republican deregulation, and he started saying how they were gutting everything, and from there he started talking about how every time a plane crashes, it's pilot error, unless the pilot survives, because in that case he can testify that he went to turn the steering wheel and went like that (he gestured turning a steering wheel to the far left), and be like, "That shit don't work! But no, if the motherfucker dies, they be all, 'Pilot error.'"
From there he talked a bit more, then, abruptly, he was like, "Time for me to get off my high horse and go him," and he said by and left, and I read my book a bit more and polished my beer off and went like two blocks home, agog to think that shit like that goes on in that bar every night, and I'm not there.
I went to grab a seat at the bar and have a drink and read my mafia book, and like the only one open was to the left of these two raucous (black) guys, both in their late 50s or so, and the one sitting next to me touched my arm when I sat down and was like, "Hey man, how you doing?", and then stopped his conversation with his friend to ask me about my book, and I told them about how the Italian mafia takes bribes from factories that produce toxic waste and then mix that shit in with the cement on their construction projects so they can take low bids.
After that, we all talked, and I got to reading, and after the guy next to me got up to go the restroom - he was tall and with a shaved head and an earring in each ear, and had an orange shirt on - the other guy - shorter, fatter, small moustache, and a National Guard baseball hat on - was like, "I didn't even know that guy before I came in and sat down," though he proceeded to tell me the story about how when he came in the guy was like, "I know you from somewhere," and it turns out that they're both from the first graduating class (200+) of some Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., high school around here that was built in the early 70s.
Later, that dude left, and then the original dude left, but not before swigging back each of his cans of PBR on the bar, to make sure nothing was left.
So, I read a little more, and then the dude next to me, this one older (black) guy in a brown suit with a black beret on who kind of looked a little like Al Sharpton with short hair, and scrawny ("Herbert") turns to me and starts talking and saying how this bar is "the best joint in the zip code," for the service, the ambience, the music, etc.
So, we talked a bit about other bars, and I defended the student bar for how they poured the cheap whiskey heavy, and he said that after the black neighborhood bar got the automatic pour-stopper, business has been down like 60%, but it's coming back little by little.
"How long ago was that?", I was like.
"Oh, like four to five years ago," he said.
Then we started talking about the music, and he said it was because they had an online jukebox, but I said that that wasn't it, because I've been in places where there's the same jukebox but people play shit, and that it was the people with good taste doing the selecting that made the difference, and he kind of agreed, and then I compared that to karaoke, and he accused me of being judgmental about karaoke.
"You can't go in being all judgmental about who's singing, you are there to have fun," he was like, and I disagreed and said that some people are drunk assholes, and then he was like, "But no, it's like when you pull into a highway rest-stop and you go on the side that says 'Trucks Only', you don't know what you're going to get, you just have to be open."
I took that in stride and then we talked more about the neighborhood and he started saying it was going so downhill that you couldn't even buy a suit anymore in the neighborhood, or even between there and downtown.
"You can't even buy a suit," he was like.
I then mentioned it was nice to have the president around, and he said that it wasn't, because they close the street for like a mile up and down whenever people are in town.
Then we started talking about the Olympic bid the city has, and how it would dislocate the neighborhood to have that in here, and how anyways they should put it further south in the parts of the city where there's the industrial brownfields, otherwise no one would clean it up.
"And imagine," he was like, "When the World Cup was here and when the Rolling Stones played fans from all over the world were walking across the highways and blocking traffic, and that happens here? Shit."
Then, all of a sudden, he was like, "And Obama would come in the middle of all that, and they'd have to tow all those cars? I'd like to see that."
From there he started talking shit about Michelle Obama and how she was the sole author of this recently-uncovered document shunting poor people from the neighborhood away from the emergency rooms of university hospitals and to the main county hospital way downtown, and from there moved on to peanuts, and gestured with his hand broadly.
Now, I thought he meant the peanuts machine in the back of the room, because last time I had gotten some from that they were kind of stale, but it turns out he meant Republican deregulation, and he started saying how they were gutting everything, and from there he started talking about how every time a plane crashes, it's pilot error, unless the pilot survives, because in that case he can testify that he went to turn the steering wheel and went like that (he gestured turning a steering wheel to the far left), and be like, "That shit don't work! But no, if the motherfucker dies, they be all, 'Pilot error.'"
From there he talked a bit more, then, abruptly, he was like, "Time for me to get off my high horse and go him," and he said by and left, and I read my book a bit more and polished my beer off and went like two blocks home, agog to think that shit like that goes on in that bar every night, and I'm not there.
Addendum.
Also, there was a whole spirituality discussion at the BDSM talk, but I left that out of my post.
A lot of BDSMers see it as a spiritual practice of disengaging from worries and putting trust in another person, and both people grown in their relationship. The swinger lady brought up the topic by saying she thought of that throughout the entire movie, and I added that during the polyamory movie I thought of the autobiographies of monks and nuns a lot, because the husband of the woman interested in polyamory intellectually accepted polyamory as good but had to work through instinctive jealousy, and that reminded me of what happens when monastics live in communities and do the same thing, like Ste. Therese of Lisieux, who was bothered by this nun who would always clear her throat in chapel, but instead of telling her to stop, Ste. Therese instead decided to redirect her thoughts to the overwhelming love of Christ every time that happened, and so for the good of the community ideal re-conditioned her instinctive reaction to something otherwise annoying to something even arguably more spiritually-produtive than chapel, which Ste. Therese thought she just sat through a lot instead of focusing on.
"That's deep," the swinger lady was like, and she meant it, appreciatively, and when I apologized and said that I hoped that didn't make anyone uncomfortable, she was like, "No, it takes a lot more than that to shock us," and later a Mexican woman in her early 20s talked about the erotic imagery of Catholic art, and how that's in the back of her mind as she's reforged her relation to sexuality through BDSM relationships.
A lot of BDSMers see it as a spiritual practice of disengaging from worries and putting trust in another person, and both people grown in their relationship. The swinger lady brought up the topic by saying she thought of that throughout the entire movie, and I added that during the polyamory movie I thought of the autobiographies of monks and nuns a lot, because the husband of the woman interested in polyamory intellectually accepted polyamory as good but had to work through instinctive jealousy, and that reminded me of what happens when monastics live in communities and do the same thing, like Ste. Therese of Lisieux, who was bothered by this nun who would always clear her throat in chapel, but instead of telling her to stop, Ste. Therese instead decided to redirect her thoughts to the overwhelming love of Christ every time that happened, and so for the good of the community ideal re-conditioned her instinctive reaction to something otherwise annoying to something even arguably more spiritually-produtive than chapel, which Ste. Therese thought she just sat through a lot instead of focusing on.
"That's deep," the swinger lady was like, and she meant it, appreciatively, and when I apologized and said that I hoped that didn't make anyone uncomfortable, she was like, "No, it takes a lot more than that to shock us," and later a Mexican woman in her early 20s talked about the erotic imagery of Catholic art, and how that's in the back of her mind as she's reforged her relation to sexuality through BDSM relationships.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Went to a BDSM movie last night.
So, I went to a BDSM documentary-and-discussion event last night (=Tuesday night), part of the same series as the polyamory movie.
I waved to the swingers I knew from last time on the way in, and the guy smiled and the lady waved back; he was wearing a wishbone on his neck-chain instead of a medallion like last time, and she wore a silver theme necklace with miniature handcuffs, along with her usual black.
The BDSM host with her beginning announcements regretfully reported that the upcoming regional polyamory convention had been cancelled, because not enough people registered.
"It's tough with today's economy to get people to travel," that goateed polyamory (and BDSM!) dude Steve was like.
After the movie -- they weren't that good, they had people gushing about fetishes with little explanations, or showing people licking boots and shit; the only part that engaged sympathy was when this one top guy ran the tip of a knife on the hand of his bottom woman and he was like, "See, it's just sense play, imagine her blindfolded and tied up and I do that all over very slowly, that's a whole scene right there" -- we all rounded up chairs, and me and my friend I went with (she does rape crisis hotline work) ended up in front of the swingers, so I turned to them and was like, "Should we scoot these chairs in, or will be blocking your view?", and when they said we were fine, I was like, "Sorry, but I had to make sure to negotiate before dominating your view," and the lady laughed and was like, "See, you're learning already!", and I used that as an opportunity to segue into meeting them formally and we gave introductions all around.
All the practitioners at these things seem to have a healthy sense of humor, for the most part, and to have the same sort of eyes as people in the New Age movement, probably because most of them are in that too.
Anyways, what I took away from this was that the same people who are into sci fi and fantasy and polyamory are into BDSM mostly -- there's even sci-fi debates that mirror some of sexuality ones, like how at conventions there's debates between the popularly-stereotyped positions of "Fandom is a Way of Life!" and "No, It's Just a Goddamn Hobby" -- except for this big black dude with a goatee ("Lord Faroah") who had begun to explore BDSM recently, and always played football in high school, and who discovered he likes to spank but has a problem because a lot of black women are closed to that because of the legacy of abuse under slavery, and the white women who want a black man usually don't have "nice big bottoms, like that" the guy said, holding out his hands about three feet apart.
(In fact, one of the black dominatrices in the documentary refuses customers who want to be domineered by a strong black woman, and is like, "You are dealing with me, a person, not a strong black woman, so get to know me first," she's like... She doesn't do "race play".)
One of the repeat people was the big moustachioed, ponytailed, overweight, leatherjacketed (and a darn nice guy!) polyamory dude who has a few girlfriends and used to have a government job and keep pictures of his girlfriends on his desk. Supposedly, he is a master of creating "scenes" that are a delight for all five senses, and his most famous one ever, as someone in the audience mentioned as an aside (everyone likes to seem to talk about their sex lives as an aside), prominently featured a woman being smacked by a dead fish.
Overall, people disliked how popular representation of BDSM left out all negotiation and made it seem like anonymous sex, rather than sex within a relationship. They particularly disliked how C.S.I. does laced-with-inaccuracies fetish episodes during sweeps week, and when someone mentioned it and said that that's where the majority of people get their information, not from the BDSM community, the wonderful swinger lady behind me shook her head all seriously, and saddly, and was like, "They sure do."
That said, all the people there said the BDSM people on Yahoo! personals were freaks, and that a lot of the people who domineer for money don't like it and don't know what the heck they were doing, though the hostess kicked off the discussion by talking about how some dungeons in NYC recently got shut down by undercover cops who had gotten hazard pay to go there a few times as customers and collect info to shut the place down, the hypocrisy of which she denounced since she said that "word on the street was that they visibly enjoyed it."
The only person out of place was this older mentally ill guy who had asked a question about the Great Porn Debate, and tried to talk about how all his life no therapist or psychiatrist could help him and he only dreams of sex with a woman, and he would interrupt a lot of people and occasionally ask people to repeat the website names for informational resources on BDSM.
At the end of the lecture, the dude asked a long crazy question again, so my one friend who I went with and I got up to leave, as do the swinger people. Somehow in the foyer we started talking, and the lady was saying how she went to a lecture by Bill Ayers on his new book and that that same crazy guy older mentally ill guy was there asking questions and they see him a lot at events, and that Bill Ayers has been demonized by the media too and is a really nice guy.
During the Q&A, she also said that being a swinger is a spiritual practice that makes you in touch with who you are and how societal norms are malleable and can be changed, and that that's why the government hates it and goes on prosecution binges against that and BDSM, because it opens people's minds and puts them in touch with who they are.
I waved to the swingers I knew from last time on the way in, and the guy smiled and the lady waved back; he was wearing a wishbone on his neck-chain instead of a medallion like last time, and she wore a silver theme necklace with miniature handcuffs, along with her usual black.
The BDSM host with her beginning announcements regretfully reported that the upcoming regional polyamory convention had been cancelled, because not enough people registered.
"It's tough with today's economy to get people to travel," that goateed polyamory (and BDSM!) dude Steve was like.
After the movie -- they weren't that good, they had people gushing about fetishes with little explanations, or showing people licking boots and shit; the only part that engaged sympathy was when this one top guy ran the tip of a knife on the hand of his bottom woman and he was like, "See, it's just sense play, imagine her blindfolded and tied up and I do that all over very slowly, that's a whole scene right there" -- we all rounded up chairs, and me and my friend I went with (she does rape crisis hotline work) ended up in front of the swingers, so I turned to them and was like, "Should we scoot these chairs in, or will be blocking your view?", and when they said we were fine, I was like, "Sorry, but I had to make sure to negotiate before dominating your view," and the lady laughed and was like, "See, you're learning already!", and I used that as an opportunity to segue into meeting them formally and we gave introductions all around.
All the practitioners at these things seem to have a healthy sense of humor, for the most part, and to have the same sort of eyes as people in the New Age movement, probably because most of them are in that too.
Anyways, what I took away from this was that the same people who are into sci fi and fantasy and polyamory are into BDSM mostly -- there's even sci-fi debates that mirror some of sexuality ones, like how at conventions there's debates between the popularly-stereotyped positions of "Fandom is a Way of Life!" and "No, It's Just a Goddamn Hobby" -- except for this big black dude with a goatee ("Lord Faroah") who had begun to explore BDSM recently, and always played football in high school, and who discovered he likes to spank but has a problem because a lot of black women are closed to that because of the legacy of abuse under slavery, and the white women who want a black man usually don't have "nice big bottoms, like that" the guy said, holding out his hands about three feet apart.
(In fact, one of the black dominatrices in the documentary refuses customers who want to be domineered by a strong black woman, and is like, "You are dealing with me, a person, not a strong black woman, so get to know me first," she's like... She doesn't do "race play".)
One of the repeat people was the big moustachioed, ponytailed, overweight, leatherjacketed (and a darn nice guy!) polyamory dude who has a few girlfriends and used to have a government job and keep pictures of his girlfriends on his desk. Supposedly, he is a master of creating "scenes" that are a delight for all five senses, and his most famous one ever, as someone in the audience mentioned as an aside (everyone likes to seem to talk about their sex lives as an aside), prominently featured a woman being smacked by a dead fish.
Overall, people disliked how popular representation of BDSM left out all negotiation and made it seem like anonymous sex, rather than sex within a relationship. They particularly disliked how C.S.I. does laced-with-inaccuracies fetish episodes during sweeps week, and when someone mentioned it and said that that's where the majority of people get their information, not from the BDSM community, the wonderful swinger lady behind me shook her head all seriously, and saddly, and was like, "They sure do."
That said, all the people there said the BDSM people on Yahoo! personals were freaks, and that a lot of the people who domineer for money don't like it and don't know what the heck they were doing, though the hostess kicked off the discussion by talking about how some dungeons in NYC recently got shut down by undercover cops who had gotten hazard pay to go there a few times as customers and collect info to shut the place down, the hypocrisy of which she denounced since she said that "word on the street was that they visibly enjoyed it."
The only person out of place was this older mentally ill guy who had asked a question about the Great Porn Debate, and tried to talk about how all his life no therapist or psychiatrist could help him and he only dreams of sex with a woman, and he would interrupt a lot of people and occasionally ask people to repeat the website names for informational resources on BDSM.
At the end of the lecture, the dude asked a long crazy question again, so my one friend who I went with and I got up to leave, as do the swinger people. Somehow in the foyer we started talking, and the lady was saying how she went to a lecture by Bill Ayers on his new book and that that same crazy guy older mentally ill guy was there asking questions and they see him a lot at events, and that Bill Ayers has been demonized by the media too and is a really nice guy.
During the Q&A, she also said that being a swinger is a spiritual practice that makes you in touch with who you are and how societal norms are malleable and can be changed, and that that's why the government hates it and goes on prosecution binges against that and BDSM, because it opens people's minds and puts them in touch with who they are.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Why hipsters don't live in black areas.
A few thoughts:
Compared to Mexican or hispanic areas (the hipster locales of choice, Mexican more than hispanic areas like Puerto Rican areas where the hispanics know English), the cheap restaurants in poorer black areas tend to be fast food, not taquerias, and the black areas get tagged as "unsafe" though the black areas adjacent to the currently cool, a little too-expensive parts of town seem to have the same level of crime as the hispanic areas.
Also, since most hipsters don't know Spanish, they are able to have this self-image of being more diverse and more in touch than the average white person (and hipsters are almost all white), but they don't actually have to interact with the people who allow them this international persona when they are the background at taquerias and bars and supermarkets. Interacting with black people would probably just be too awkward, since that gets into how race and class are intimately connected for non-immigrant Americans, and that's too much for hipsters to deal with honestly.
Though, yuppies who are all about the money just move into black areas, it seems like, and have no qualms about having money and redeveloping and pricing the older residents out. The hipsters know they should be ashamed, and so don't go there...
Also also, maybe immigrants have a higher turn-over rate, and so there's not a sense of disrupting perceptible community like you have with black people, who you can communicate with? This one Colombian grad student I know who lives in the big Mexican neighborhood says he hears Mexicans bitch all the time about the hipsters moving in, though the hipsters of course don't know this since they don't speak Spanish.
Compared to Mexican or hispanic areas (the hipster locales of choice, Mexican more than hispanic areas like Puerto Rican areas where the hispanics know English), the cheap restaurants in poorer black areas tend to be fast food, not taquerias, and the black areas get tagged as "unsafe" though the black areas adjacent to the currently cool, a little too-expensive parts of town seem to have the same level of crime as the hispanic areas.
Also, since most hipsters don't know Spanish, they are able to have this self-image of being more diverse and more in touch than the average white person (and hipsters are almost all white), but they don't actually have to interact with the people who allow them this international persona when they are the background at taquerias and bars and supermarkets. Interacting with black people would probably just be too awkward, since that gets into how race and class are intimately connected for non-immigrant Americans, and that's too much for hipsters to deal with honestly.
Though, yuppies who are all about the money just move into black areas, it seems like, and have no qualms about having money and redeveloping and pricing the older residents out. The hipsters know they should be ashamed, and so don't go there...
Also also, maybe immigrants have a higher turn-over rate, and so there's not a sense of disrupting perceptible community like you have with black people, who you can communicate with? This one Colombian grad student I know who lives in the big Mexican neighborhood says he hears Mexicans bitch all the time about the hipsters moving in, though the hipsters of course don't know this since they don't speak Spanish.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Cookies.
This Romanian ph.d. student presented a paper at a workshop today. His grandmother is living here with him and his wife for a few months since his wife just had their first baby, and for his presentation he brought in a tray of cookies.
"These are from my grandmother," he was like, "She said that if you don't my paper, perhaps you still like her cookies."
He also said when going through the history of scholarship and referring to an article from 1933, after a pause when he said the year, "That was the year that my grandmother was born."
"These are from my grandmother," he was like, "She said that if you don't my paper, perhaps you still like her cookies."
He also said when going through the history of scholarship and referring to an article from 1933, after a pause when he said the year, "That was the year that my grandmother was born."
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Toilet problems.
The little rubber stopper thing that lifts up when you push the toilet handle and lets water flow into the bowl, and then plunks down again when enough water has gone into the bowl, has become disconnected from the metal lever thing in my toilet.
So, now when I need to go to flush the toilet, I have to let all my shit just sit there in the bowl getting nastier by the second, while I open up the top, set it on the sink, and plunge my hand in up to my elbow and manually take the little rubber stopper thing off for like 4-5 seconds.
I would call my landlord, but I called them about something in the laundry room last week -- I came in and one of the driers that I had started hadn't dried anything; I thought maybe a fuse broke or something, but it turns out that it must have stopped shortly after I left and just ate my token, putting in a new token worked -- and I don't want to seem too needy.
So, now when I need to go to flush the toilet, I have to let all my shit just sit there in the bowl getting nastier by the second, while I open up the top, set it on the sink, and plunge my hand in up to my elbow and manually take the little rubber stopper thing off for like 4-5 seconds.
I would call my landlord, but I called them about something in the laundry room last week -- I came in and one of the driers that I had started hadn't dried anything; I thought maybe a fuse broke or something, but it turns out that it must have stopped shortly after I left and just ate my token, putting in a new token worked -- and I don't want to seem too needy.
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