An odd dream of radical feminists...

The other week, I dreamt -

I was back in my hometown, and was looking for updates on the one radfem blog that I read regularly, but nothing was there.

Then, the day after Halloween, I discover that there had been a major radfem conference in the area, and the major blogger and some commenters were all there, which is why there were no recent blog updates, but somehow I didn't know of it b/c I'm not entirely tapped into those circles and so I missed it.

Somehow, there was some sort of local group related to herpes prevention, and it had become the center of this crazy radfem energy and broadened its mission, and was beginning to be even legendary.

I began to discuss these developments tentatively with some people I knew, but they all came out strongly against the radfem group, and said that it should just "stick to herpes".

So, I shut up.

What I don't get about Cubans.

Why are so many of the Cuban men I see kind of pasty with round faces and upturned noses and big ears and usually a paunch, too?

It's not just Marco Rubio, but the random ones I meet in the city.

They also have this disgusting thin hair that sticks around their forehead all weirdly and stringily when they're sweaty.

My apartment's spatial demarcations with reading:

I sit at my kitchen table to read newspapers and periodicals , but I use my chair in the living room or my time lying in bed to read novels.

Nonfiction books and smartphone crap can be read anywhere, and I also do crossword puzzle magazines anywhere.

I've been this way for a couple of years now, but I just realized it in retrospect when I was thinking to myself why I wasn't reading some classic fiction at the kitchen table.

Going on 5 year of barhopping, and the patterns I see:

1) Upstairs tucked-away bars are death to business (been in a couple in the city that have now flipped twice and are on their 3rd iteration, within not quite 5 years).

2) Bars used to be named by address numbers (e.g. "Lounge 503"), but are now being named after the streets they're on (e.g. the "Lauderdale Pub", if it's on Lauderdale Ave.).

Art school vindictiveness and retaliation.

After that one "tenured tyrant" cut 2 of my classes and got another prof to cut my 3rd, my future at the art school got massively reoriented.

If I could teach a handful of classes for a few years, I could petition into a higher paygrade with more stability, but that was effectively taken away from me, because I'd have to beg courses from the one remaining coordinator and find time to write the syllabi and then teach them repeatedly before I could even get back to that state where I was at.

So, I had nothing to lose by asking questions about working conditions that allowed such stuff to happen, because I was on solid ground due to similar experiences had by other colleagues.

The fact that I was on solid ground was borne out by the fact that once they tried to retaliate against my last class, I could invoke the NLRA and their internal investigation restored my last class (though they claim it wasn't retaliation).

I'm not sure how much they understand the situation, though.

From what they're saying, they think that that attempted retaliation was in the past, and that everything's "back to normal".

Except, other people are alarmed and concerned from what they've heard, and this is more a matter of working conditions than ever - for example, how that decision could have been made, or if the purported neutral internal parties (deans, special faculty positions) are actually covering up retaliation, from what can be determined.

I'll have to check with the union to make sure that these inquiries aren't counterproductive, but it seems like it should be determined as much as possible what went on, so that people can more fully think through what it means to have a union at a place where such behavior occurs and internal fora don't seem adequate as advertised, as now seems to be the case.

Catching up with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend.

A few weeks ago I popped in to visit my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend to see how apartment renovations were going and have a late dinner and catch up.

When I explained at length how the art school was retaliating against me organizing over working conditions, he was like, "These people, they think that they can just throw you away like an empty chip packet."

He also told me about one anthropology class he's teaching, where to make a point about culture he gave the students an assortment of candies from gum to taffies to chocolates and asked students to categorize and rank them.

A surprising amount of students looked at the calories listing, and arranged them from most to least fattening.

Dream of a late-stage GOP presidential hopeful.

The other week I dreamt that I was watching a TV cable newsshow with the inset headshot and the blue around-the-frame and the scrolling banner at the bottom, and the guy being interview was an aging (white) (male) veteran-turned businessman from a really hardcore sector of the armed services, like maybe elite forces or something like that.

He kept saying that he was confident that he could win the GOP nomination for president, which is why he was throwing his hat in the ring, and then he began naming all the charities that he had started.

He kept going on and on, and about the tenth one that he named - and they all sounded so jack-off and ineffectual and resume-fluffing! - I started thinking, "Really?", and then he started talking about some organization that would send hot pizzas to vets who were now in college and up late studying.

The screen then shot to a picture of a pizza box being opened up, and the toppings were arranged in the shape of simple sums and multiplications.

Part of the charity's idea was to help vets study their math that way.