Was at the BNB this weekend.past

So this past weekend I was at the BNB ("black neighborhood bar"). I stopped through after the student bar to get a beer and see if anyone I knew was around, and I ended up talking with this younger (black) girl two seats over, after she struck up a conversation when the "New Moon" trailer came on.

"I so want to see that," she was like.

As it turns out, she's the Sunday day bartender, and was addicted to the first Twilight movie. As she was telling me this, the Saturday night bartender, this big, thick-set, intimidating (black) man with a goatee and dreads was like, "I've only seen that nine times."

"What?", I was like.

"My daughters," he was like. "They kept dragging me to it, I couldn't say no."

After he left, I started asking her about how much of the first book made it into the movie, like the scene where the vampire protagonist confesses to the human female protagonist that when he was stand-offish the first time he met her, it wasn't because he didn't like her, but rather because her smell was driving him insane, and he could barely restrain herself from devouring her.

She said that that was definitely in there, nodding brightly.

"I don't get what's going on inside that head of hers", she was like, "But I love it!"

Missed Opportunity: A Scientist Asking to Understand the Humanities.

The other day at the Wednesday lecture-lunch thing, I happened to sit down across the speaker and not know it, and the guy was the chair of the new interdisciplinary program training people in the intersection of biology and physics.

Anyhow, he asked at one point why humanities ph.d.s take so long compared to the sciences, and that his wife is an anthropologist and he asks her this all the time and he still doesn't understand, and all I could come up with off the cuff is the huge research histories in many fields, and that newer research doesn't invalidate older stuff, oftentimes, and you kind of have to know it all.

I also said that 70% of time was spent learning other languages (which is very time intensive, to gain proficiency).

Later, I realized I should have asked 2 things:

1) Which living and dead languages had he studied, and at which levels?

2) Had he taken a college-level history course?

I never established what his level of knowledge was, and if I had asked that, I could have quickly broached issues of the different languages needed in different fields, how long it takes to learn them, etc., as well as how history at the college-level is not just "dates and facts" like you may have learned in high school or in an intro history course in college.

I think this bothered me so much, because science people (and econ people!) can be very chauvinistic when it comes to other fields, and it really really sucks when they get into high administrative posts, since they don't understand other fields and don't usually understand that they don't understand, which is something humanities people don't usually do - on the contrary, they'll recognize the importance of the sciences and support them, whereas scientists won't do the contrary.

And, usually scientists really really suck at critical thinking skills, too.

Martinis.

So, the other week I was going to go have $5.50 martinis to celebrate my finishing my comprehensive exams, but people were flaking out all that day, even though they had said they would go when I pitched the idea like a week earlier.

Anyhow, I ran into my one (black) dean that day, and, after congratulating me, she was asking me if I was going to do anything to celebrate.

"Six dollar martinis!", I was like.

"Good for you," she was like, " I always say that you have a healthier work-life balance than anyone else around here."

"Yeah," I was like, and then I went into explaining how there was no one else around to go out with me, so she should encourage that more, so I have someone to go to six-dollar martinis with, because I can't always do it alone.

At that, she laughed, and was like, "Heck, if I didn't have a church function tonight, I would be tempted to go with you!"

. . .

As it turns out, a friend did come through, and we went out and had three rounds.

That night, in my troubled sleep, I imagined that I was in the martini bar, only there were no tables or chairs or bar, just couches built into the walls with throw pillows everywhere, and my one (black) dean was walking down the center of the bar towards me holding a martini glass.

Smelly undergrad.

The other day I went to a lunch lecture, and the place was packed, and I got like the last chair, by the door. When I was eating my sandwich and potato salad, this heavy bearded (white) undergrad with several piercings came in, and he ended up sitting right next to my chair, and the smell of b.o. was so overpowering that I was actually thinking of getting up to move to another part of the room and sit on the floor elsewhere, out of the range of his smell, but I didn't... I thought people would look at me funny, and I was hoping that my nose would get used to the smell and I could start eating again.

Montreal.

My biggest impression from being in Montreal for a conference -

It was very jarring to hear French everywhere, and see an integrated society. It made me realize that I associate foreign languages with people being racist assholes and English with progressivism on integration, but that doesn't have to be the case... It's funny to think that Europe could be like that someday, with all these rinky-dink languages being used in multicultural societies.

My other big impression was that I had two of my bags opened up in the airport. One was because I had my (empty) thermos in it, but they swabbed the outside to make sure there wasn't traces of explosives or drugs in there, and then the other one because I had 4 coffee cans in it...

Actually, I also had 2 big plastic bags of really good paprika that I had gotten at a Hungarian deli, and I was wondering if it scanned as cocaine when it went through the x-ray machine, but no, it was the coffee can. The younger (Quebecois) dude who stopped me looked a little confused when I pulled out all those coffee cans from my luggage and he had to swab them, so I was like, "I collect coffee cans, and I found many new coffee cans on this trip."

"Oh," he was like, looking a little confused.

Then, looking at all of the cans I had unpacked, he was like, "Where is your can of Tim Hortons?", and I explained that I had gotten one of those at a Tim Hortons in the Detroit area last year, since the chain is expanding into America.

"The can is bilingual," I said, "although I bought it in the United States. One side says 'always fresh', and the other says 'toujours frais', and there is pictures of people skating on it. It is a Christmas can."

"Yes," he was like, "Tim Hortons produces seasonal cans."

Purple.

I recently got a really cool scarf that has mostly dark and light gray and black stripes,with a few stripes of lavender and deep purple mixed in. The other night, then, I was coming back on the bus, and since it was packed, I had to stand near the front, right next to this younger (black) girl who was seated and had a short curly haircut, with the curls on the top front of her head dyed the same shade of deep purple.

"Nice hair!", I was like. "You should be wearing this scarf."

"Thanks," she was like. "You know, it's my favorite color."

Forgot.

I forgot --

At that last sex doc, there's this one late middle-aged (black) guy with a beard who comes sometimes, and who gives me the feeling that he's not quite all there... He talks way too much, and doesn't notice that he's acting boorish, and I always think that people who don't pick up on other people's social cues have a little something wrong with them.

Anyhow, the dude used to work for Playboy, and he was saying that there's no telling how your children will turn out, that they're their own people, and that though his daughter was around everything as a kid, she now is a really conservative "I want to find one boyfriend and settle down"-type.

"And I remember when she used to be playing in the office and the gay art director was xeroxing his balls on the photocopier right there," he was like.

He also added that he was of mixed feelings about not always being able to be upfront about your sex life even if it was nothing to be ashamed of, and that it was hard for him to stop going to sex parties during the custody battle.