Got some articles bound up.

So, I printed out a bunch of articles for the class I'm going to be TAing this year and next (the prof gives people the job for 2 years), and I took it over to the local FedEx store to get it bound up for cheap, since a friend told me that they do that.

I had to wait 20 minutes since the store was a bit busy, so I sat and read for a bit, and when they called me up to check out, this short older really dark-skinned (black) lady was waiting by the counter, and when they rang me up for the binding and the total was $3.63, I was like, "That's all?", and I showed her how nice they had bound it up for me.

"Look at how nice that binding is, and the cover, and they did it for 20 minutes, and they can unbind and rebind next year if I have to add in new articleas, and it's all for three sixty-three!", I was like.

"That is nice," she was like, looking it over affably and nodding her head and smiling. "Now get out of here before they decide to charge you more!"

Addendum.

A friend from my program (Indian-born Christian, raised in the Middle East and then Texas when her parents moved to each for Texas) got her hubbie hooked on Lady Gaga, and delegated to him being online when the new tix went on sale...

He got nothing for 2, but after trying a ton, he finally was able to buy 1, and gave it to her.

She feels bad about him not going -- the scalped tix are even higher now than when me and my friend bought them -- but she says she likes Lady Gaga more than him, and she really wants to see her in concert, so she doesn't feel too bad.

Also, I told my (one) (black) female dean about my getting tickets when I was through her office the other day, and I asked her and her secretary if they knew who she was, and automatically my dean was like, "Oh yeah," and started being like --

rama ya nah nah...

Got Lady Gaga Tix.

So, the other weekend when I was out with a friend, we were talking about how much we want to see Lady Gaga when she comes to town, but what a bitch it's been to get tickets.

First, they all sold out in 2 seconds when they first went on sale, due to demand and scalpers.

Then, they changed the venue to a much larger one and people had to re-buy tickets, but that was a disaster, and then they sold more tickets, and they had all solden out by then too.

So, we just went and got some from scalpers, and I had to pay like $90 more than I normally would have for a ticket.

Right now, I'm justifying to myself as a use of Christmas money - my parents gave me money for Christmas, and I put it into my account like usual at 1st, but I figure this is a good use of it, since I would have been psyched if they had gotten me Lady Gaga tix as a treat.

Also, there's no way I'd try to get tickets night-of, since the theater (actually, the one Barry recently played) is way out in the suburbs (1+ hours from my house, one way), and no friend woudl do that with me, and it's fun to see her now instead of next tour, since she's so hot right now... I figure this concert will be totally worth it - or at least I hope so.

Addendum.

I forgot --

Several of the younger guy bartenders at the local student bar are really sleazy - one time I warned a vulnerable woman I had just met away from one who was giving her a shoulder to cry on as she was dumping her recent break-up on him; luckily, he didn't find out, I found out another time that he permanently banned from the bar this other guy who cock-blocked him - and like 3-4 weeks ago I was sitting at the bar, and the one was telling the other some story that ended with him cumming in a drunken girl's mouth, and she said it tasted like gin.

"But," he said, "That was better for her than the time that I tasted like chicken wings, I suppose," and at that the other bartender laughed, sleazily.

Addendum.

When I left, I gave my friend who works the library desk an assignment - to think of upbeat, lyric-y songs for me for krunk karaoke, and she said she would.

"I've been thinking of doing 'Man in the Mirror'", I said, "But I'm afraid if I do that and mess up, people will get pissed."

"Uh, yeah," she was like, "You gonna have to graduate to that one."

Stories: My one friend who works the library desk.

So, the other Sunday I was talking with my one (black) friend who works the library security desk at the main entrance to the main library at school.

I had just shaved that day, and my hair was brushed, so when I walked up and said hi, she said hi and then was like, "My, you're clean-looking today."

Then, she paused and was like, "But maybe that's because you're white."

Then, since she was watching ice-skating on YouTube, we started talking about skating, and she said she used to rollerskate a lot, and she remembers falling once and being down on the ground when this really little boy skated up and was like, "I'll help you!", and started pulling her hand and trying to help her up though he was so much smaller than her.

"Thanks honey," she was like, "But that won't exactly work."

"Though," she then added, "Why don't you be a dear and pull off those damn skates for me."

Later, she was saying on New Year's Eve that there were tons of guns going off around her house, and we started talking about gun control some, and I started saying it's too bad that all these NRA supporters who are hunters don't understand the different effects that guns have on different areas, and so they resist any legislation against guns.

"Well, I've had this idea for years," she was like, "But no one will listen to me -- ban the damn bullets, or at least tax them and make them real expensive. Can't bake bread without an oven or gas."

Then she added she's had a lot of good ideas over the years, but no money or way to patent them. For instance, she thought of toothpaste in a shaving-cream type can back in the late 70s, and she wants to create a potty-training chair with a built-in recorder that goes off every 3 hours or so telling the kid that it's time to go to the bathroom, though you could also use it for Alzheimer's patients.

Keys - Lost and Found.

The other day I left my apartment in the mid-evening and had just closed the door, when I decided to check if I had my keys on me. It turns out I didn't, so I went immediately upstairs to the janitors apartment so he could let me in to mine, since it seemed better to do that then than when I came back much later at night

But, when I went back into my apartment, I couldn't find my keys, so I got out my spare set of keys, which are attached to a 4-ball I got from a carnival game once at the carnival part of my hometown festival.

(Oddly, the 4-ball broke off the keychain that very day.)

Anyhow, I finally found my keys in my big heavy down coat's outside pocket... Since it has been bitterly cold lastely, I put that on when I went to get groceries, but since the coat extends down my legs some, I must have put the keys in the coat pocket rather than back in my jeans pocket when I got in the door with all my groceries, since the coat was blocking easy access to my jeans pocket.

New Year's Eve.

So, I did end up going to the African New Year's Eve party. Sister Rose had rented out the rec room of an apartment complex a number of blocks north than me, and though the room would have been ideal for 50-60 people and only like 30 people showed up, it was a great time.

The room was big and long with tables and chair around the edges, and thin green ribbons and plastic yellow flowers taped to the walls and hanging from the ceiling. On one end this Tanzanian dude had a computer set up and hooked up to speakers and shit, and on one side near a kitchen there tables set up with different African and other foods -- jollof rice, goat meat on backbones, cubed lamb cooked with peppers, some kind of Asian noodles, falafels, fruit salad, Tanzanian fried bread - and then a liquor table with wine and beer and a little hard liquor to boot...

And, like three older African ladies with full garb on were tending the tables, though I didn't talk to them much, though one of them laughed when she saw me getting food and bobbing my butt along to the African music the Tanzanian DJ was playing.

(That happened to me several times when I was in Ghana and Benin a couple summers ago, where women would get a huge kick out of catching me unconsciously moving to the local music... It was the only real way that I endeared myself to most Africans I met.)

The people I ended up talking to the most were some local African-American customers who were good friends with Sister Rose. One of them was a self-described (black) (female) 'old radical' from a neighborhood experiencing black-on-black gentrification -- she was in a huge kind of tie-dyed purple kente cloth kind of thing, with African embroidery on the front -- and when I was asking her about development there, she said that the new people moving in didn't participate as much in the community.

"That's because all the buppies are probably too busy sitting in their rehabbed condos and watching their flat screens," I was like, and she loved that.

Later, she was also confessing to me and my one (white) friend from Mississippi, who I went with, how much she likes Star Trek.

One of the other highlights of people talking to was this really tall older (black) lady with close-shaved bleached blonde hair, who wore a very short black mini-skirt over her gigantic legs (she wasn't fat, but her legs were solid and *thick*) and tall leather boots. She also had a lot of these big futuristic silver rings all over her fingers, and it turns out that she was a jewelry maker who knew Sister Rose from craft shows.

She didn't talk much, and seemed really skeptical looking whenever I talked, but every once in a while I would get her laughing...

And, when I went up to the table to go get another beer and asked her if she wanted one, she said no, she only drank champagne.

"Now why is that?", I was like.

"Becaue of the way it makes me feel inside," she said, waving her fingers somewhere out in front of her breast, "All bubbly."

Though, she was curious about this beer I had, and I poured her a little bit into her cup later after she finished off that glass of her champagne (she had brought a bottle with her so she'd be sure to have something to drink, something she does at every party).

Later, we were talking about the Millennium, and she said she went to Jamaica, since if the world was going to end, she wanted to be in someplace she liked.

"And so what did you do for the Millennium?", I was like.

"Sat on a beach in Jamaica and drank champagne," she was like.

Then, she said it turned out that her hotel she was staying in was a brothel.

Later, too, we danced a bit and she tried dancing close, and she hinted that she wanted to see me perform at krunk karaoke.

(I had told her I had sung "Boogie Oogie Oogie" and she had laughed spontaneously, and then was like, "I bet you would be good.")

"You seem more performative than your friend, " she was like, and then I had to explain to her that the first time we went and he sang some blues song about throwing a woman on the floor because he wanted her so bad, that he had quite a fan club of women at the bar, and I don't get that so much.

"Really?", she was like, and she looked curously over at my friend...

The other great person I talked to was this 23-year old Zimbabwyean (sp.?) dude who was like a year out of college and was in the exports business. He told me that Sister Rose is so much more than someone who likes to party -- she came a little late to her party, and entered dancing around giving everyone high-fives -- and even so much more than like a mother to any young African she meets -- he says that that happens a lot, that Africans band together despite cultural differences, because those differences are dwarfed by being in the U.S. -- but that also she immediately has the respect of any Zimbabwyean she meets, since way back when, she used her position as a businesswoman to spy on the Rhodesian government and then feed the info back to the native revolutionary troops, and she would even feed the troops at her home, despite the risk of death to herself.

"And that's not even her country," he was like, "But she did that. And that was all before I was born, too," he was like. "There's so much you don't know about a person, any person you meet."

New Story: Lady Red.

I forgot more -

Me and my one (white) friend from my program who's originally from Mississippi and who I got hooked on karaoke were talking about when we went to krunk karaoke, and he mentioned how Lady Red is protective of her real identity, and when I asked him about that, since I hadn't noticed it, he told me about this exchange he witnessed when he went up to the table to get a songbook:

A (black) man: "Lady Red, that's your name?"

Lady Red: "Yeah."

A (black) man: "That's your real name?"

Lady Red: (curtly) "Yep."

After that, the guy backed down, intimidated.

Felching Alternative of a Friend of a Friend.

A friend told me this story about his friend--

That dude had a boyfriend who wanted to felch, but he found that disgusting, so he came up with an alternative: he gave himself an enema, and shat most of it out, but reserved a little bit, then gave the dribble into his boyfriend's mouth.