Olympics at the student bar...

Like last weekend I was at the student bar doing a crossword at waiting for friends to show up, and the opening ceremonies for the Olympics were on tv.

"Who is that singing?", the one older (white) bartender said, peering at the small screen at the one end of the bar.

"David Hasselhoff," one of the younger (white) bartenders (though not one of the skeezy ones) was like, genuinely, also peering at the screen. "He's big in Europe, and I guess he's Canadian or something."

Then, they watched the song for like another twenty seconds, and then the younger (white) bartender was like, "Holy fuck, it's K.D. Lang."

thought.

If I'm at school looking hung over - stubble, dark circles under my eyes, generally out of it - people think I'm just like all the other students, and staying up late and studying way too hard.

Coincidence.

The other week on a weekday a first-year ministerial student who's in the class I'm TAing for (though not in my section) was up at a bar with a friend way on the other side of the city, and they start talking with this friendly guy...

Who turned out to be a glass-blower from my hometown, and he passed along his greetings to me.

(I've hung out with him a few times, he went to my high school for a while before going to public school, and we re-connected after running into each other at a ? & the Mysterians concert a few years ago, though we don't see each other that much, though I have hung out with him at his salesbooth at a few neighborhood festivals in summers past.)

Advice at the student bar from a (black) guy...

Last night I was at the student bar with a Swiss friend of a friend who came internationally to study, and after he was getting tired and headed off, I went to the back room of the bar to say hi to a friend.

While there, I said hi to an older (black) gentleman who was sitting near me - you meet eyes and nod heads and smile or say hello, is a (black) cultural thing in general that a lot of (white) people don't pick up on - and then his friend came to join him, this older (black) gentleman who comes in the student bar a lot and always orders martinis, and who I know from around, so I started talking with them.

As it turns out, the older (black) gentleman who I just met had gotten into this spat at the white neighborhood bar early that week, because the (white) bartender told a younger (black) customer to order something else, since he didn't know how to mix a martini, and when the older (black) gentleman told him he'd walk him through it, the (white) bartender told him to kiss off or something, and things just blew up from there...

"I have been going in there for thirty years, and I spend forty dollars there a month, and though I have a ph.d., I did grow up in the projects, so I told him he could kiss my black ass, and my black-ass ph.d. almost went around the bar to go beat him down," he was like.

Then, he added, "And I never get racial, but I always knew he was some white motherfuckin' trailer trash from the country, and now he just proved it to me."

After that, he was starting to say how the customer is always right, and I respectfully disagreed, and said that it sounded like he was in the right, but sometimes, managers got to close ranks around staff if a customer is really an asshole, and he agreed, and said that when he tended bar, he used to tell someone he'd buy them their last drink, but they'd have to leave after.

"Kill them with kindness," he was like.

Then, he said that no neighborhood bar should have a shot counter on their liquor bottles, but it should all be free-pours.

(He expounded on that for like 5 minutes.)

Then, he gave me some lessons on life, including:

- The most important thing in life is respect, and when you wake up in the morning, you got to look in to that mirror and want to make love to yourself.

- Everyone wants a little ass, but the important thing is that when you're out looking for it, not to stick your head up on it.

He also told me about how when he was in social work class a (black) guy came to him and said he was going to commit suicide, and he told him, "Well, go and do it, and be sure to send me a letter from up in heaven, because I'm sure you'll be able to."

"My professor called me out on that," he was like, "But there's no formulas for that shit, and I was trying to save his black ass."

Then, he added that the prof removed him from the case, but the client asked for him back.

Greek.

I forgot -

The other night when I was drinking with my one (white) friend from Mississippi, he was mentioning something about the Greek curriculum for his class he's teaching (he's teaching intro Greek), and then I mentioned that a student had had a question about Greek from some class he was taking after the lecture that morning for the class I'm TAing, and he came up to ask me and the other TAs about it.

"What was his problem?", he was like, and with that I took up a pencil and wrote down from memory the sentence on the first page of this book I had out and was reading before my friend got to the bar (=a 25-cent copy of Helen Gurley Brown's "Sex and the Single Girl" with no cover I had gotten at a booksale), and then I showed it to him and asked his opinion.

First, though, I paused and was like, "Look at how pretentious I just was," and my friend said that at least I didn't try to put all the right accent markings on, which I took as a challenge, and so I tried that.

Almost fainted.

Today I almost fainted at the Wed. lunch-lecture thing.

The speaker was a psych prof who has researched the phenomenon people who give their kidneys to strangers, and as part of his PowerPoint presentation - while everyone was eating! - he had a picture from surgery or a doctor holding a human kidney in their hand, this brown thing with a little tube dangling from it.

I automatically felt a little queasy, so I slid down in my chair to keep blood from rushing away from my head.

I also tried to get my mind off it by taking whatever word he'd be saying at the time and spelling it backwards in my head until I was done, and then spell backwards the next word I heard him say, and that worked for a while, but when I stopped, I started getting queasy again.

The room was really warm, so I took off my sweater and my collared shirt, and was just there in my t-shirt, but by then I was too far gone, so after like 30 seconds, I got up to leave, and I went outside and sat on a step in the cold, till I felt better.

Then, I went downstairs in the building to check email, and when it seemed like it was time for the lecture to be over, I went back in and grabbed my stuff.

Did I tell this story?

Can't remember if I did -

A few Fridays ago my grad division had its once-a-term, apocalyptic "free food and open bar" event from 4-8pm... I wasn't drinking because of a sinus infection, and afterward when everyone left, snow was falling, and there was like 2 inches of snow on the ground, and a couple ministerial students who were hammered were outside smoking and looking at this cute little bunny grazing among an ivy patch outside that was just beginning to be covered in snow.

At that, I horked up some snot in the back of my mouth, and was like, "Five bucks that I can spit on the rabbit!", saying that and cradling this big lump of snot in my mouth.

Everyone was like, "No!", at once - some more ministerial students had been drifting out with everyone, and had stopped and joined their friends and were also looking at the bunny - but one had lit up a cigarette too, and was kind of laughing, so right when everyone had stopped paying attention, I stooped, gathered up some snow, and handed him a snowball, and was like, "Bet you can't hit it."

He was hammered and looked a bit gleeful at the suggestion, so he whipped the snowball at the bunny (which was only like 3 yards away), but it hit just below the bunny's feet, and the bunny sprang up like 2 feet into midair with its paws tucked in, and then ran away under some bushes...

And with that, all the ministerial students stopped talking, and just stood around looking at each other.

"Man," someone was like, "I've never seen a rabbit jump straight up like that before."

Pepper / Soup.

The other day I was refilling my pepper grinder at home, and a bunch of kernels fell down on the floor... I swept them up and for a moment I thought of picking them out of the dust bunnies, but then I decided against it.

Look, I'm getting better at throwing shit away.

Also, the other morning during the blizzard, I looked out, and my pot of soup on the windowsill (a new batch, this time vegetable soup, though it turned out shitty) was a big white lump of snow, since it had been covered in like 14+ inches of snow overnight.

Marcus Aurelius Trivia / Yet more books.

My one (white) friend from Mississippi has been reading through the correspondence of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius with his former teacher, Fronto... He told me that every once in a while Fronto reminisces fondly about kissing his pupil.

"That was the times, man," he was like.

He also said that he immediately thought that that would be a great topic for a book, and then the next thing he knew in his research he came across a book that someone had written on that very topic (though I'm not sure if it's the one I just linked to, which is more an edited collection of those letters).

Also, I liked my idea of putting the books I'm getting rid of next to the library copies so in case anyone looking for the book on-shelf wants my copy, they can take it, so today I put these on shelf next to the library copies:

a) a shitty English translation of Augustine's "De Trinitate" (actually, not the translation I linked to, fyi).

b) Rudolf Bultmann's "New Testament & Mythology".

c) C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity".

I hope someone can use them!

Also, I hope the library doesn't catch me! I don't think they have a way of tracing this shit back to me, but still...

It's kind of funny, when you think about it - with library jobs I've held before and I've shelf-read to see if any books have been mis-shelved, I've never once come across a non-library book... I wonder what the future shelf-readers will think! Will they talk about it amongst themselves, and about who would have done this?

Called my parents: My dad was watching tv.

So, last weekend I called my parents, like I always do every weekend.

After talking a bit to my mom, she handed the phone over to my dad, and I asked him what he was up to.

"Well, right now I'm flipping through the channels," he was like, and then, "Shit, it's Sarah Palin on Fox!"

"No way," I was like, "Are you going to watch her?"

"Yes," he was like, "And then afterwards go vomit."

Then, he added, "She is such a lightweight, it's not even funny."

Then, he added again, "And I hope she's doing it for the money, since if she believes half of the nonsense that comes out of her mouth, it's scary."