Mug problems.

I have very little cabinet and counter space in my new apartment, so, among other things, I installed some hooks underneath the cabinet over my kitchen sink.

Now, I’ve broken a bowl and a small dish at my apartment, since I have to leave them to dry on my like 2 feet of counter space directly underneath my over-stuffed cabinets and stuff has tumbled out of there when I open it and struck a dish drying on the counter and knocked it off the counter and down to the floor, where it shattered.

But, recently, twice in one week, I had hung a mug up on a hook under the cabinet and took my hand away to leave it hanging, only it wasn’t on securely and fell down to the sink and had its handle shattered off.

Hipster karaoke – it was only okay (part II of II): Singing, and then karaoke.

But, before karaoke, my one (white) friend from Mississippi had been invited to play a few songs as part of a Saturday night lineup at a nearby hipster bar, one of a series of continuing (unpaid) gigs that he got through this guy he met at hipster karaoke and who liked his singing.

The bar was kind of shitty. At first glance it was cool because it was painted all neat and had old music posters up, and they had great beer prices and nice bartenders – the owner was there, this old (white) guy of Swedish descent, and they were selling glogg made from his family’s recipe, and to buy a good beer was only $3.50 (!) – but the bar sucked for several reasons.

First, it was full of (white) hipsters trying to be cool. The bar was packed, and everyone was (white), except for a few Asians, who tend to be (whiter) than (white) anyhow. So many of the hipsters try to make themselves ugly, too, which I’ve been noticing lately – get ugly piercings, not wash their hair and let it grow long, etc. It makes me just want to slap them all and tell them to grow up.

Second, the stage was way up in the front, which is one of the worst places for a stage, and not only could you not see it, but the music was on too loud, so you were bombarded with music from a stage you really couldn’t see and didn’t care about.

We got there at 10pm and left after midnight for hipster karaoke, but though we put songs in right away and stayed for more than an hour till close, we never got to sing.

The worst part was that like half the crowd were these (black) early-to-mid-20s “cool” kids, almost like hipsters...

When I first got there, this one (black or mixed-race) girl was singing Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’” and people were eating it up, only she was doing it in this ironic, repulsive way that no one seemed to notice, probably because the audience was also hipsters.

After that, it was nothing but her and her friends for like the next 7-8 songs... On one a group of (black) guys got up, and the 2 “backup” guys didn’t sing, and the lead guy didn’t have a voice, and all their friends were dancing up close and taking pictures, and on another some (black) girl got up and sang Britney Spears’s “Hit Me Baby (One More Time)”, and on another one a (black) guy and a (black) girl got up to sing and were pretty much just howling into the microphones and clowning around throughout their “duet”.

“What a bunch of bullshit,” I told my one (white) friend from Mississippi, during the girl singing Britney.

“No,” he was like, “She’s not bad, and that guy who sang before was pretty good. It’s nice to see some soul here.”

“You know,” I was like, ‘You’re giving them a free pass at karaoke because they’re black. If that was some white sorority girl from a Big Ten singing now, you’d make a face and roll your eyes because it’s so typical to sing Britney, and the rest of them are just clowning with their friends. They’re karaoke jackasses, but you don’t notice because they’re black.”

That line of analysis made him uncomfortable, but I told him that one of the things I appreciated about krunk karaoke was learning how not all (black) people sing well, and how all these (black) women think they’re divas and put some diva song in and can fuck it up too, they don’t have some magic ability to sing awesome just because they’re black, though maybe they think they do, or think they should be able to.

Later, after last call, and karaoke was still going, I left, because the host called up some people yet again from the huge crowd of early-to-mid 20s (black) kids, and this like 300lb (black) gay dude sashayed up to the microphone with this “look at me” attitude to sing Michael Jackon’s “Can’t Stop Loving You” with 2 (!) of his (black) lady friends, and I had to leave, he was pissing me off so much, I’m not going to stick around and enable some obnoxious dude’s attention-getting complex.

So, I said bye, and then went outside and hopped on my bike and left.

Hipster karaoke – it was only okay (part I of II): Pre-karaoke.

So, the other Saturday night I went to hipster karaoke, after a long chain of events.

First, I went to this discount clothing store in my new neighborhood, to get a thin cap that I could wear under my bike helmet, since I was bicycling 25 minutes to the hipster neighborhood and it was getting cold out.

Second, I first went to a hipster coffee shop to read and whatnot for a few hours... I brought a few books, as well as a Greek dictionary and my copy of the Life of Mary of Egypt from Migne’s Patrologia Graeca, to read a bit (which I did, for the entire time I was there; I just felt like it).

Third, I met up with my one (white) friend from Mississippi and a (Canadian) colleague and the girlfriend of this other student who’s friends with everyone at the taco place to get some Mexican food at this place that has really good carne asada.

Unfortunately, the carne asade I had in my torta (which I ordered in Spanish – “una torta de carne asada con todo, por favor,” which made the [Mexican] waitress smile) was fatty and didn’t taste like usual, but the restaurant was otherwise fun...

For some reason we got talking about how brides can be selfish at weddings, and it turns out that my one (white) friend from Mississippi, who’s an ordained Baptist minister, had performed several, and he says he always cedes to the wishes of the bride.

“Were these family and friends or just random people you married?”, I asked.

“Well,” he was like, “I married my cousin...”

“Ha!”, I was like, “I hear that happens a lot in the south,” which made him laugh.

Later, too, he was saying how he would present a set of like five different types of vows, and the couple could pick one.

“Couldn’t they write their own if they wanted?”, the one girlfriend of this other student who’s friends with everyone said.

“No, not many people do that,” my one (white) friend from Mississippi was like.

“It’s not like that many people can read,” I was like.

Also unfortunate at the Mexican restaurant was the fact that when I arrived I had to take a huge shit because that morning I had had 2 huge bowls of oatmeal with oats I had gotten at the discount supermarket chain, and after I took this brown, watery shit with a bunch of backsplash and mopped up the excess ass-water around my asshole and fired the toilet paper in the water and flushed, I went to go wash my hands, only to discover there was no soap. And, we hadn’t eaten yet, and everyone was eating from a communal bowl of nacho chips and salsa.

But, luckily I thought to go to the register, and they had a giant bottle of hand sanitizer sitting out by the cash register that I used, so I was able to sterilize my hands... Luckily too no brown ass-water got on it, otherwise the sanitizer would have just smeared it around, and maybe not even sanitized it.

Unluckily, though, the heat in the restroom was like 95+ degress, so I left a really nasty muggy shit smell in their for whichever patrons used it next.

Discount Supermarket Chain.

The other day I was in this discount supermarket chain in my new neighborhood, this one that had been successful in Germany and imported into the U.S. a number of years ago, I guess.

One thing that was interesting was how they had open cases of products and no frills, to drive down prices.

The other thing I noticed was the huge array of brands that I had never heard of – but when I’d flip them over and see where the brands were based, they’d all have this little notice saying they were produced by the supermarket chain in a different part of the state. I wonder if it’s part of the success of the chain, to have people think they’re buying a wide variety of different brands, when really they’re just buying the store’s generic brand over and over no matter what they buy.

Addendum - Scrotal Showing.

I forgot -

During the scrotal showing, the resident intern who originally examined me with the German dermatologist was there for like 1/3 of the time, and he stood there in order to cut me off if I gave too many hints away to the other doctors, since I was going to be the focus of his presentation that afternoon and he didn't want to give away the surprise of my condition. He even cut me off when someone asked me about travel history, even though before he got there I had told some doctors and was like, "Well, last summer I was in the Netherlands, and the summer before that...", at which point they all had cut me off, though one when she found out I was in Africa, said it was too long ago to matter. I thought that was silly, since it's not like that clued them in majorly.

Also, sometimes when I'd offer to show my scrotum, the doctors would be like, "Sure," and start ducking down to look, even though the chair I was sitting in faced a long busy corridor and the door was wide open.

Also also, I grilled the resident what he though about astrology.

"Not much, except that I read my horoscope everyday," he was like.

"That's Western astrology, I was like. "And that's bullshit."

Then, I told him about how my one friend whose parents are Indian dabbles in astrology and told me that I had the problem with my testicles during a 6-month period that was inauspicious for that area of the body.

"That's so weird," he was like.

"Tell that to the doctors during your presentation this afternoon and see what they think!", I said, and I kind of hope he did, because a good number of the doctors who came through the scrotal showing were Indian, and I wonder what they would have thought about that.

NEWS FLASH.

I started writing my dissertation today. I got a couple paragraphs, but it's still a start on the programmatic overview, which hopefully I can workshop in the winter and set myself up to get a dissertation fellowship for next year!!!

The only mitigating suckiness is that I found out this weekend that John Waters is in town this upcoming month for a one-man Christmas stand-up show for one night only, and it happens to be the night of the mayoral candidate debate I got invited to through the community organizing group in my new neighborhood, so I'm skipping John Waters to go to that. :/

I figure the mayoral thing is a one-time event, whereas maybe I'll have another chance to see John Waters again at some point in my life. And, plus it will be fun to meet new people in the neighborhood like I have through the community organizing group, the leadership of which likes me a lot, btw, because I like to go do door-to-door stuff, they don't have enough volunteers for that!

Sex doc - at a new location!: Kink museum.

Through the email list I'm on, I found out that there was a Sat. afternoon screening of this sex documentary at this kink museum in the city that I've always heard about, and since the doc didn't seem half-bad - it was about 5 women of different ages who did self-esteem building activities to put them in touch with their sexuality and make them more comfortable with it - I decided to go.

The building was in an ethnic neighborhood and didn't have a clear sign out front, but it did have these banners with a silhouette of a tall leather boot on each side.

And, inside, it was like a normal museum entrace with a display case cash register etc., except that the coatroom had the word "UNIFORMS AND COATS' above the entrance, and the artwork in display in the lobby were these giant spray-painted pictures of buff gay men who were shirtless in leather jackets in chaps, and either had huge hardons going almost all the way down the top half of their leg under their jeans, or popped out.

And, by the entrance to the cinema there was this older fat pot-bellied (white) guy with a beard and a leather cop hot and vest selling refreshements he had made himself - cappucino brownies, muffins with dried fruit and orange icing, and pizza popcorn.

"Popcorn that tastes like pizza!", he was like. "I came up with the recipe myself."

And, a free beverage came with each one, so I got me a muffin and some pizza popcorn and a cup of coffee, and then went into the cinema...

Some people in the audience I recognized from the film series, including the one retired male nurse who had grown up in an Italian neighborhood as a thug but then became a sexologist, so I sat near him and caught up before the film started.

The film was decent, and the Q&A interested. The best questions was whether you could make the same doc with a group of straight guys, and people pretty much said no, because straight guys see sex as about performance and not pleasure and the 1st step to forming a group like that is admitting you're dissatisfied with your sex life, which most couldn't do.

"I am a sex worker," one woman in the back said, who had raised her hand, "And let me tell you, that the place for most men to admit that is when they're clients. Since, it's all about, 'How do you want to be pleased?', or, 'What can I teach you?'"

After the Q&A, the male nurse made a beeline for the sex worker, and asked her if she had ever read the seminal study from the 1970s, where a sociologist had hid in some prostitutes closets and watched, and then formed descriptions of 9 male sexual types.

(He couldn't remember the title, but it was something like, "Friend Lover Slave".)

Only, the male nurses's eyesight isn't that good (he's kind of old), and he asked the question to this other, quiet (white) girl with brown hair who occasionally comes to the film series, and from what I gathered there is a lesbian.

Me and her talked a bit, and it turns out that she's a few years out of college and has lives for 2-years in these Catholic Worker-like houses run by the diocese, only you commit for a couple years to a time of faith and volunteering, not a life.

She's also a lesbian into leather.

"I wonder how that mixes," I was like. "I bet the diocese would be happy to know that!"

"Sometimes I feel like I'm doubly closeted," she was like. "When I'm around lesbians, people get weirded out about Catholics, and then when I'm around Catholics, they can't know my true self with leather."

I then asked her about the recent election in the National Catholic Conference of Bishops or whatever it's called, and she too was concerned about how a conservative was elected.

Then, she was like, "But, on some level, I'm also not concerned, because, that's not my church," meaning the hierarchy, as I understood her.

Exploitation of migrant workers.

Like over a week ago when I was at school I ran into the (black) administrative assistant I'm good friends with, and she asked me how was that surprise dinner with my neighbor who I used to campaign for Obama with in Indiana.

(I had seen her that morning, right after I found out that my friend was unexpectedly in town, that's how she knew.)

So, I told her about it, and then since in the past she was interested in my friend's job, I was telling her about how some of the U.S. companies sign up workers promising them 40 hour workweeks, and then work them 120 hours a week and if they complain they deport them.

"I honestly cannot believe that," I was like, and my friend was shaking her head, as she stepped in to the elevator to go upstairs to her office (I had run into her in the building foyer).

Then, I was like, "Actually, I can," and she was like, "I was thinking that too, that I can believe that," and she grimaced as the doors of the elevator closed and she was like, "Bye!".