Public transportation exchanges.

The other morning was bitter cold, and as I got off the subway, I saw the bus that I had to catch across 2 lanes of traffic ready to take off, so I waved my hands and caught the eye of the (black) (female) busdriver, and she waited for me.

When I got in and swiped my faircard, I was like, "Thank you so much for waiting, normally I don't mind, but it is so bitter cold today, it is so nice of you!".

She just said thanks, but this one (middle-aged) (black) (female) passenger in the front rows just smiled and laughed and was like, "It is, it is cold and that was nice of her!".

I love how people here talk on public transportation.  That doesn't seem to happen in New Orleans!

Downtown Starbucks (2 of 2): Liberal Dutchman.

Later, after another sample, I started talking with the non-MBA guy at my table, who had turned to writing out expensive photo cards in some non-English Germanic language, though I had a hard time telling what it was b/c of his writing.

I suspected German, but I asked, and it turned out he was Dutch, and was a businessman living in the city.

We chit-chatted some, and he was from Rotterdam, and so I gushed about how it was my favorite city I saw in the Netherlands on my 16 day vacation around my Dutch friend's wedding.

"It was so cool and diverse," I was like.

"And the modern architecture," he added.

"But more than that," I was like, "You really felt that all the non-ethnically Dutch Dutch citizens were really part of the life of the city.  And didn't Rotterdam have a Moroccan mayor?"

"Yes," he was like.  "I'm surprised you noticed all that."

"How can a person not?  It's very different from other Dutch cities," I was like.

"And it's the way that they all should be," he said, finally.

Downtown Starbucks (1 of 2): Coffee.

A few weekends ago I headed downtown to use a birthday coupon from Express that was about to expire, and pick up a few other things.

After my shopping, I went to go stop by the flagship Starbucks and have a cup of coffee, only to discover that they had moved a block up into a new "built from the ground up" building.

Then, not only that, but I discover that Starbucks is introducing a new 'evening menu' w/savory foods and beer and wine...

I mosied up to the 2nd floor lounge, which was dense with chairs and *packed* w/people, and I sat around a small bar near 4 (middle-aged) (white) guys with laptops.

Every once in a while, a (female) barista would come out with different samples of the new menu - bacon-wrapped dates, and roasted chicken skewers with a honey-dijon sauce - and me and the other guys at my table started talking about the evening menu.

The (male) barista overheard, and he gestured towards 2 gleaming new espresso machines.

"And take a look at that," he was like.  "That machine cost $15,000, and that one cost $30,000.  And let me tell you, they make good coffee."

"Good coffee?", I was like.  "They make a good case for revolution."

At that, 2 of the men near me went back to work without a response.

From their books I could see out, I think they were MBA students.

The (male) barista didn't say anything either.

Book excerpt: Fundamentalist Mormon homelife.

I forgot a lot of this stuff in "God's Brothel" (e.g. p. 161, about polygamist Mormons in Montana) -

When Sylvia was nearing her 13th birthday, her father married Vera, a 14-year-old girl, as his second wife.  "Rulon Allred, the now-martyred prophet, married that child to my father," Sylvia says.  "I can remember my mother sewing her wedding dress.  It was green dotted Swiss."

With a new wife crammed into the family trailer, privacy was at a minimum.  "My mom would walk past the two of them french kissing on the couch.  One night I found my mother hitting herself with a hair brush so she wouldn't think about it," says Sylvia.  "The rest of the time, Mom had to teach Vera home skills like another child.  Then Vera had a son right away."

. . .

Werner Erhard revelations (1 of 3): Predecessor programs.

From Steven Pressman's "Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from EST to Exile" (p. 41):

By the time [in 1971] Erhard gathered his staff together for [a therapeutic] session with [an acquaintance], the Leadership Dynamics course had become the target of lawsuits brought by participants who had signed up only to find themselves the unwitting victims of cruel physical and emotional abuse during the sessions.  In some cases instructors ordered participants into closed coffins.  Others were hung onto large wooden crosses for hours at a time.  Still others were forced to take off all their clothes while fellow participants taunted them with cruel insults.  In one session, a man was forced to perform fellatio on an artificial penis while women attending a separate Leadership Dynamics class were brought in to watch.

I just can't get over how that program has an innocuous title like "Leadership Dynamics", and then participants show up and are forced to fellate an artificial penis - and others are paraded in to watch.

And people put up with this! 

Social pressure is amazing.

Nyquil make me sick, I think.

I noticed this last year:

Right after I got the sniffles, I took some Nyquil to dry me up at night, and it did, but I woke up in the morning with a nose clogged full of yellow snot.

The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago, so from now on, I think I'll take a benadryl or an allergy pill to dry me up, rather than the Nyquil.

I really do think that that Nyquil makes me better for a moment, but backs up the snot and makes it ripe to get infected and thus hurts me long-term.

Mi espanol borracho ("My drunken Spanish").

A few weeks ago I hit up 4 new bars (and then a Russian bakery with cheap, great meat-and-potato pies!) before going to a concert of the band run by my one (white) colleague by Mississippi.

I got there after they had already started, and I saw that a professor from Spain, a post-doc from Spain, and a Frenchwoman that he chums with were there, and I ran into the professor from Spain when I was in the drink line.

"Hey [the professor's name]!", I was like, "!Feliz ano bueno!".

Then, I was like, "Fuck, I mean, 'nuevo, nuevo'.  What the fuck did I just say, 'Happy good year!'?".

"Yeah," he was like, laughing.

Teaching at the art school! (3 of 3): More art installations!.

After a couple installations with penises, my one (light-skinned black) friend from Arkansas was like, "Hmmm, I think I'm beginning to see a pattern here."

Then, every once in a while, when I'd see some sort of protuberant piece of sculpture, I'd nudge her and point, until she'd look at it and start laughing.

We actually joked  that it was like those "guides for kids" they give out at museums where you're supposed to look for things, but ours was for adults.

While we were doing this, we go into this one cubicle that's like midway through the exhibition, and set up against a corner between 2 paintings is this baby carriage.

We look, and it's like a normal baby carriage, with a coat folded over on top of it (though the edges of the coat were a tad too close to the paintings), and some stuff like bottles and baby whatnot stuffed into the pockets.

Only, no-one was around.

"Is this part of the exhibition?", I was like.

So, we looked further, and on the one hand, it was an odd place for a baby carriage - no parents were around, and people could have left that at the coat check or behind the front desk, instead of midway through the exhibition - but, on the other hand, there was no little descriptive piece of paper on the wall saying it was part of the exhibition.

So, we looked at it further, and then this (mid-20s) (white) (female) art person strolls in, and begins to walk past us.

"Hey," I was like, in a friendly manner.  "Do you think this is part of the exhibition?"

She looked at the baby carriage inquisitively for like 15-20 seconds, then turns to us and is like, "I don't know."

After she strolls on and leaves and we're done looking at the baby carriage some more, my one friend was like, "You know, I don't think it is, it can't be."

"Why not?", I was like.

"Not enough penises."