Addendum.

Also, walking into school yesterday I saw what was put up two nights ago in the window of a small Mediterranean restaurant down the street from me -

A big neon green sign saying the place was closed because of the Mayor's "Dumpster Task Force".

I wonder if this is part of the same effort to get the city more cash right now like his suddenly charging all the businesses everywhere for awnings if they jut out over the sidewalk into public space.

Mammy / My Mother.

Walking into school today I passed two older white guys - maybe in their early 60s? - and one of them was saying, "You can't say anything nowadays, what's wrong with calling someone 'Mammy'?"

I got this e-mail from my mom today --

Hi Guy!

[...]

"Cinderella" at [your high school] last night........I really liked it. Dad's observation was that the set was less over the top so the acting was much more enjoyable. And of course there was a large cast. It occurred to me during the play that I never read Cinderella to you and [your brother]! Do you think that affected you? It also occurred to me that as a child, I was read the story, but never identified with Cinderella in the sense that I thought it was cool to maybe meet your Prince Charming some day. I wonder what that says about me.

Anyway.........probably working 'till 5 today.

Love, Mom

Also.........the pumpkin carriage was neat........kids could take photos in it after the play. Leave it to [the drama director of my high school, whom my mom calls by her first name]!!!!!

dangerous Chinese products / an e-mail from my mother.

I've had these q-tips from the dollar store downstairs for a while, and I noticed sometimes the cotton becomes a little detached from the stick after I clean out my ears and look to see how much earwax I got, and then last night I went to look at the swab-part, and it was gone, I noticed I had a hard time hearing in my right ear. I couldn't pick anything out with my fingers, and I didn't have tweezers, so I called my upstairs neighbor who I volunteered in Indiana for Obama with, and she came down in her pajamas (it was like 11pm) with her pair, and had me kneel on the bathroom floor while she pulled out the swab.

She is also coming, she said, to the sex documentary series/discussion group this upcoming Tuesday.

Also, I got this e-mail from my mother today, in response to a question from her on what "rara avis" means in Latin, the 2nd such question she's asked (a while ago she asked me if "sui generis" meant XYZ and she totally had the wrong defintion):

I thought it meant rare bird, but was afraid if I got it wrong this time, you'd doubt I had an undergraduate degree!

[...]

Love. Mom

A Night at the Opera (II of II): Another observation.

The one big-name soprano was Puerto Rican, and did a good job.

I didn't realize Puerto Ricans had that much culture in them.

A Night at the Opera (I of II): Observation.

So, last night I went to the opera with my one white friend who studies India, to see "Pagliacci", which is about a troupe of clowns where the main dude's wife cheats on him just like the clown she plays in the act does to the clown he plays in the act, and it call comes out on stage.

Afterwards, she was saying that in the Mahabharata and the Ramayana there's this same sort of 'collapsing of frames', where the author who's authoring the epic inserts himself into it in knowing ways, and that got us to talking about examples from Western, non-Indian cultures (e.g. Don Quixote, etc.), and we realized that there seemed to be no good, famous examples of the phenomenon from Christian culture -- the closest we could think of was that Gregory of Nyssa's "Life of Macrina" is a text modelling a holy person who should be imitated, and in the text it has her reading the lives of other holy people to model herself after!

"Man, what a shitty thing for a religious tradition not to have," I was like, especially one that's so proud of its texts."

"I know," she was like, and shook her head.

Irish parade addendum.

I forgot --

Last year when friends went to that one Irish parade I went to on Sunday there was a line at the liquor store, and the line was next to the whiskey shelf, which was full of half-empty bottles from people swigging it while they waited...

Glasses / Earrings.

At a department dinner the other night I saw the one Mormon guy from my program and his wife, and they brought their new baby along, and since his wife who's very laid-back and blonde and beautiful and hip had these rectangular thick black-framed glasses on, I was like, "Hey [her name], nice job with the sexy mom glasses," and without missing a beat, she was like, "Hey, what can I say, once you have a child you have to try to kick it up a notch."

When I saw them and their kid a couple weeks ago, too, their kid was cranky, and he was relatively skinny compared to these other grad students' baby who everyone was also playing with, so the one Mormon guy was like, "Look at him, pale scrawny and bitter, a perfect grad student baby."

Also, this past Saturdy when I was at the grocery store this one older (black) lady had her cart in front of the beets, and I was waiting for her to be done so I could go get a beet for myself, but she moved her cart and was like, "Scoot in there if you need to," and we ended up talking a bit, and I was saying I was going to the one more neighborhood-y St. Patrick's Day parade in the city on Sunday, not the big one downtown, and she said her coworkers go every year and love it, and she went once, and wore her big long green earrings.

story from my mom.

my mom said that a couple weeks ago she saw when she was working at the library a friend from high school's husband's dad (her husband is older than us) who recently found out he had a relapse with cancer and she was like, "Hey [his name], there's a new Robert Parker book out, do you want me to put your name on the list for you?", since he really likes that series, and she said he stopped and had to think, which really bothered her; he really didn't know if he should put his name on the list, she said.

irish parade today.

a button I saw at the Irish parade:

IRISH WHISKEY
MAKES ME
FRISKY

a t-shirt I saw at the Irish parade (the front):

IRISHMEN HAVE SMALL DICKS...

the same t-shirt (the back):

...AND NO I'M NOT IRISH

a "Goonies"-themed t-shirt I saw on an eight-year old boy at the parade with his family:

HERE LIES
ONE-EYED
WILLY

(arrow pointing down)

a t-shirt I saw on this drunk dude:

(clovers)

I'M NOT IRISH I'M MEXICAN
I JUST FOUND THESE
WHEN I WAS MOWING YOUR LAWN