Campaign 2012 Tidbits (1 of 16): Obama on the Tea Party.

From Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s Double Down – Game Change 2012 (New York: Penguin Press, 2013), p. 14:

“If people vote for *this*,” [Barack Obama] told one of his aides [about the ascendent Tea Party], “they deserve it.”

. . .

Spanish Revelation.

“Enchilada” is a feminine singular past participle, the ‘en-chilied’ feminine singular thing.

I realized this the other week when I was browsing the dairy aisle at the store near my house, and was looking at a bunch of hispanic (mostly Mexican) cheeses, and one with a bright red rind had written on the packaging, “QUESO ENCHILADO”.

Wonderful People in Bars.

Whenever my institutionally dysfunctional academic program has been getting me down, I think of all the people who have been nice to me in bars for no reason.  I find that very heart-warming, and inspiring.

The other night I was 1^st at this one older bar by an industrial park with factories and slaughteryards that used to be manned by working class whites and Poles, and is now only open weekdays and into some evenings, for the few workers who still work nearby from the dying industries... 

The place had high wood ceilings, and smelled a bit damp and woody and like cigarette smoke too, and through an open door off to the back end of the bar you could see  up some steps to a bare 1950s kitchen, with a cheap light fixture made of plastic to look like stained glass overhead.

Two (older) (white) men were watching “Wheel of Fortune” on TV, and another 2 (white) guys were outside smoking, and had told me which door to go in when I asked (what looks like the front door is locked; you actually have to go in a door on the side, but it’s not clear which one if you've never been to the bar before, since there's not much sign of activity).

This one old short (white) woman who looked taciturn and moved slowly but showed no particular signs of arthritis got my order – the draft Miller Lite turned out to be $1 – but didn’t seem particularly chatty.

I sipped my beer, and looked at the shit on the shelves behind the bar, mostly random junk, though there were a lot of plastic statuettes of cartoon characters, and also at the small handmade red-and-white paper sign, like 2” x 2”, taped to the front of the old metal register –

WHAT HAPPENS IN POLAND – 

STAYS IN POLAND.

After a bit of that, the old taciturn woman slowly and quietly crept  up the bar, and then stopped just to my left and gestured to this small table of coldcuts by the door, and whispered to me, “Please help yourself.”

So I did.  There was a few plates with bits of ham and salami and even like half a loaf of cold homemade meatloaf sliced up for sandwiches, and bits of cheese and some olives and pickles, and an open plastic bag of bread, and a blue-and-white pewter nestling bowl where you put ice in the bottom and something that has to be chilled in the bowl that’s set on top, which was full of ham salad, and was set beside a small tray of Saltines.

I had a few Saltines with ham salad as I made myself a meatloaf sandwich with mustard, and then took that on a napkin back to the bar along with a pickle...

Across the street and like half a block up was a Mexican bar with pictures of busty women and pesos under the glass counter, and like halfway through my beer this young unblinking tense-looking (very dark black) guy with very heavy stubble comes in, and sits 2 stools down from me at the bar, and I can see out of the corner of eye that he has safety pins in his ear, and a bit of tissue hanging out of his nostril and it's like half soaked in blood...

The bartenders and patrons looked nervous - there were a couple (Mexican) women behind the bar, and the bar was almost full with (Mexican) patrons and a few tables nearby had (Mexican) people at them - and the 2 (Mexican) (women) bartenders found some meaningless busy work at the the far end of the bar in order to stare at their hands and pretend they hadn't noticed him and not serve him, so he sits there looking up and down the bar, and then goes in back to where there’s a pool game going on, and I hear a loud clash like a poolstick was thrown on the floor.

Then, the guy paces out from there, looks around, and leaves the bar.

“What the fuck,” I asked the (Mexican-American) plumber who was on my other side, who I had been talking to.

“He wants trouble,” the guy was like.  “You saw him, he comes in here, sees who’s drunk, sees who he can get when he leaves.”

“That was weird,” I was like, “What was up with the tissue hanging out of his nose?”

“And there was blood on his hands,” the guy was like.  "You didn't see that?"

Then, he paused and added, “When you leave here, be careful.”

...I feel so much like in grad school I try to do right by people, and by the institution, and my concern is so rarely acknowledged or reciprocated, that I’m touched when other people I meet – and so many of them, too!  - just reach out when they don’t have to, and show thoughtfulness and even concern for me...

Awful grad students.

You know what’s bad?  Know-it-all grad students, who tell you “how academia really works”.

Usually, they seem to have seen something that’s very dysfunctional, and then generalize from there.

One (white) (female) 1^st year grad student whose eyes weren’t quite right, and had worked while doing her masters in some dean’s office at an American university in another country, said she got to see tenure appointments and searches, and how offers weren’t given because so-and-so doesn’t like so-and-so, and so on, for like every appointment and search.

“But I'm glad to know what I’m up against!”, she said, brightly.  “It’s better to know that now.”

Two horrifying dreams (2 of 2): Contest.

I’m at a contest where on the edge of a vast empty parking lot of asphalt there’s a big square rotating platform, maybe 15 x 15, and a guy dressed like a green-skinned orange-bearded viking (like the troll who's Anya's husband in Buffy?) beside it asking trivia questions about fantasy novels, where you have to match a person’s name to the realm that a trial of theirs happened in, and then the name of the trial itself, and each question is associated with a side of the platform, and as the first person in the group I’m with guesses, the appropriate side of the platform breaks the regular rotation and turns toward them, and as they get all 3 questions right with a laugh, it’s so easy, this animal hops off the top of the platform, which is low and pyramid-ish and full of greenery, and then is in their arms, almost like a pet or a toy, and is the prize.

I’m up next, and I get the person question right, but then I err on the name of the realm, and an animal hops off, and it looks like a rat, but is the size of a bigger small dog, and with two large front teeth (like the rodent in "Ice Age"?), and somehow I pick it up by its fox-like tail with a nervous laugh, and spin it around my head faster and faster for like 10-15 seconds, and its tail tears off a bit in my hand, as I go to let it go and it flies off into the distance and bounces off the concrete, and as I suddenly know that something is horribly wrong.

The animal is still and then slowly gets up and stumbles dizzily, then it shakes and gains its wits and starts coming toward me, slowly at first, and then scampering.

Next, I’m on top of a huge red steel girder sunk diagonally in the ground, having clambered up the top, but though it has a flat top and bottom, its sides have loosely spaced pegs.  From where I sit, way up at the top like thirty feet off the ground and safe at first, I can see the animal figure out that it can maneuver its way up the pegs, and it starts to do that very methodically and purposefully and at a decent enough speed, getting closer and closer as my chest clutches more and more.

As it arrives towards me, by my hands since I’m sitting on my hands, I know that it can get me, and I wake up.