Black people on the subway (2 of 2): A young guy.

The other morning I was on the subway into school like 7:15 am and this young high-school age scrawny (black) kid comes on with headphones, a baseball hat, and a basketball.

For a good ten minutes, he sat on the edge of the seat and dribbled the ball underneath it thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump-a-thump while the train moved.

Otherwise the subway car was perfectly quiet.

Black people on the subway (1 of 2): A girl.

The other night I was going home on the subway and two large and stylish (black) girls in their early 20s were squeezed into the seat behind me... Both had sunglasses on, and done-up nails, and really bright cool t-shirts and dark jeans.

Halfway through the ride, the one gets on the phone and the call ends up being about personal financial information - she had taken out a payday loan and thought she had paid it off, only she hadn't, and so the interest was running up.

Automatic flush toilets.

Somehow whenever I use an automatic flush toilet and I get up to wipe my ass, the thing keeps automatically flushing every 30 seconds, even if I'm just standing there still wiping my ass and tossing used toilet paper into it.

"Bigamy".

I've always wondered where the word "bigamy" came from.

I just realized the other day that it divides "bi-gamy" - and so it's a "-gamy" word like "monogamy" and "polygamy", and means "double marriage".

Scandalizing colleagues.

The other week on the way in to school I happened to be on the same subway car with a French colleague, who became irate when he saw me using a pencil to take notes in a library book from our school.

"You do not know," he said, "that I have yelled at other for that reason!"

I then defended my position, saying that it was erasable, but I only made educated comments, and that it improved the reading experience of others when attentive.

I also he said that he was behind the times, and that post-modern polyphony was here to stay, but he wasn't convinced.

I later texted my one Czech lit prof friend to find out if she ever wrote in books -

I've been guilty of that.

- she replied.

I then asked if she ever reprimanded anyone for writing in books -

Only within the pages of the book.

- she replied.

Memorable bartender.

This summer way out toward city limits I went to one of those combo liquor store - combo bar bars.

There was a giant island bar in the middle of the room, and this (white) (blonde) junkie with a mohawk, who looked to be his mid-40s and moaned a lot, laying his head on the bar.

The bartender came in, and he was a muscled-up (white) guy with tight light jeans, a red tight t-shirt, and an American flag bandana.

"Hey bro, what can I get you?", he said.

Their restroom had that poster of Demi Moore in "Striptease", where she's naked but has her arms and legs crossed to cover up her lumps and hoo-haw.

Stone cold sober.

The other week I was talking with a (computer science) grad student from school, and it came up that he doesn't drink.

"Oh," I was like, "That's cool."

"Yeah," he said, "No alcohol, no drugs."

"Perfectly respectable," I was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "But I used to do all that stuff."

Then, after a pause, he was like, "But then I almost ripped my dick off after taking crystal meth and masturbating for nineteen hours straight."

Then, after another pause, he was like, "They had to do reconstructive surgery. It was actually bent at like a 45-degree angle."

Then, after yet another pause, he was like, "It's a quarter inch shorter now, from all the scar tissue. It contracted."

Then, finally, he looked me in the eye and was like, "You honestly have no idea how good it feels. It's like a million orgasms going off in your head all at once, for nineteen hours straight. It's all chemical, but it's all real, because it's all in your head."