One dream: Poor student.

The other week, I had a dream involving one of my freshman writing students, who mentioned in section like a month ago that she's lower income and got into school on some special program for lower income students:

I dreamt that I was omniscient and bodiless floating like 12-15 feet above the floor in a cavernous cold stone dining hall, and there was my student sitting alone at a table angrily thinking that she was eating pasta for dinner *again*...

She couldn't afford fuller meals off the every-entree-priced-accordingly dining plan like everyone else happy at the other, full tables all around her in the dining hall.

Shelving job miscellania:

1) If I'm re-shelving and I hit a patch of books that's really out-of-order, I take time to put them in order.

First off, how can I re-shelve a book, when it isn't obvious where it should go?

Second off, after this Work-Study job ends, I'd be working for the library re-shelving then, so I might as well do it now.

2) The other day I went to go push my cart away from where I was working and I noticed that my thermos didn't have its little metal top on that also serves dual function as a cup, and suddenly I realized that I must have set my coffee cup on a shelf somewhere for a second and gotten distracted and accidentally left it.

So, I retraced my steps and looked at open spots on shelves, and discovered my little coffee cup sitting up there actually near where I had last been working, a third full of rather cold espresso.

I then started wondering if stuff ever gets left randomly like that in the bookstacks, like maybe someone's lunch.

I could just picture a sandwich sitting out on a piece of deli wrap somewhere deep in the stacks.

Thinking long-term...

I've been thinking more and more 2 things:

1) My dissertation doesn't have to be a scholarly book, but could maybe go as a substantive "pop" piece...

I started looking into what it takes to turn a dissertation into a book with a scholarly press, and with that much effort, you might as well shoot bigger and get a bigger audience (including scholars who aren't put off by a publishing name and take ideas seriously).

2) I want to maximize time and headspace for research, which doesn't nec. mean that I'll teach...

I'm almost thinking that a research-focused post-doc would be the best bet, perhaps followed by a quiet library circ job, if I had time to work sometimes while I made money, and if the overall salary was good enough.

We'll see if I can finish a total draft this summer, and begin revising...

It'd be great if I could graduate next year and be done with this phase of my life.

Random conversation with heavy metal fans pre-gaming.

So, the other Saturday I was out hitting up new bars, and used the bikeshare to go from one place to another.

When I hit some major construction and then paused to re-rack and re-set the time on the bike, I was right next to a parking lot by the elevated subway tracks, and there were a bunch of cars parked there with people at the back of a few of them, including some (white) (younger ) (men) right on the other side of the fence from me hanging out and drinking big things of beer.

As I'm there on the other side of the fence re-racking my bike, one drunken guy drops his beer, and it falls on the sidewalk and starts oozing out beer towards me across the slant, and he does nothing.

"Do you want me to get that for you?", I was like.

"Thanks, man," the drunken guy was like, "But I'm fine."

"Oh, no need to apologize," I was like, "I'm just a fan of pre-gaming, so I'm glad to help you out."

"It's all cool," he was like, and then all of a sudden he pointed to the beer can oozing out all the beer.

"FOR THE FALLEN!", he shouted, laughing and turning towards his friends as he tried to be funny.

I then asked them what concert they were going to, and another guy said it was heavy metal and named the couple bands appearing, one of which I recognized.

"It's great," he was like, "You come out and want to kill someone."

"I guess that's cool," I was like. "I guess if you have to do that, target billionaires?".

That made him pause for a beat, but then he was like, "Yeah, totally," and we then exchanged a few words about how the mega-rich have rigged rules to squeeze everyone else dry, and he was totally on board with that, and then I hopped on my bikeshare and headed off.

Catching up with the Swingers.

So, the other week I went out for drinks with the swingers who I know from that one sex documentary series from years ago to go catch up, since we hadn't hung out in almost over a year.

The husband had lost his job, forcing his wife to go back to consulting for a while while he's looking into working for a valet service, and they're in a new neighborhood way on the north of the city, but all is well.

We talked about bestiality some - the wife has an unfulfilled dog fantasy that she's spoken about to me several times; "I've told you about that, haven't I?", she was like, knowing full well that she had - and they also mentioned how their old roommate back when they had their house was this locally famous kinkster who once did an infamous live sex demonstration at a pretty famous university.

They said it used to be nice, b/c he'd have a submissive come in and clean the house for them.

"You know," I was like, "I've actually thought about doing that."

"It's a lot of work," the wife was like.  "He always had to watch everything she did and clap, like two claps for 'Clean,' three claps for 'Go suck his cock.'"

2 conversations w/campus staff, 1 that floored me.

So, for teaching freshman writing, I have to use this one campus copy center a lot.

I know the staff decently well, this (older) (African-American) gentleman and a (middle-aged) (Latina) woman.

So, the other week I go in there for some copies, and it's just the guy, and around him helping me out with the order, we start shooting the shit about the university and the economy etc., and we talked a long time, often with him in a hushed voice.

He said that he's one of the only older people around on campus, and if you go around nowadays, it's all young 20-somethings in all the positions, since older people don't like the negative atmosphere, or b/c they all push them out b/c they all cost too much.

"And for younger people nowadays, even thirty thousand a year is like manna from heaven," I was like.

"Exactly," he was like.

He also said that he remembers how years ago people could buy maybe a bit of property or even a cheap second vacation house, but nowadays it's like you choose to go on vacation, or do repair on your house and buy a new door or something.

"No one really does any of that any more," he was like, shaking his head and thinking about vacations.

He also said he stopped getting cable, to economize.

"But you can only do that so much," I was like.

A bit later, his coworker came in, and she dropped that sometimes when it comes bill-time, she has to choose between paying bills or for groceries for that week.

Now, that floored me, but I can totally see it if you got a family.

She also said that just the other day she was talking with one of her family members about how their aunt who was a nurse's aide worked her way up and could treat the kids to museums and daytrips, but "not any more" can a person do that.

They both said that it feels like everyone across the country is feeling something is wrong, and is casting around looking for reasons.

Past loves resurface: Karaoke.

So, that day after meeting my colleague from art school for dinner, I went newbarhopping in order to finish up a draft of a pop article and then grade student papers.

I did that first at a hotel bar, and then a bar that had flipped over and re-opened as something else.

I had talked with the suited (townie) (hispanic) doorman on the way in, saying I was going to correct student papers over beer, so he should make sure that I didn't spill any on the papers, otherwise I'd have to figure out a way to cover up the beer smell like maybe squirting some cologne on them.

So, later, on the way out, he was like, "Good night, Professor!".

"Come on," I was like, "Don't call me 'Professor', what kind of professor grades at a bar."

Then, I was like, "But you know, I'm pretty happy, most of the students did a pretty good job on this new paper, I got to say.  I kept reading them and I couldn't believe how good they were."

"It's either that or the beer," he was like.  "Give them the benefit of the doubt."

After that, I popped into a gay bar that had flipped and actually become a (straight) (businessperson) piano bar upstairs and downstairs down this staircase you'd slip a dimly lit (gay) bar with karaoke.

On the way in, I found out from the doorman that the overall gay bar had done good its first 5 years (it had been a gay bar before that too, but under a different name, maybe), but then internet sex apps helped kill it.

He explained then that people don't come out to bars for sex anymore, and the downtown swanky gays are fashion chasers, and for the 1st few months after a new swanky hotel rooftop bar opens up, the place tends to be like two-thirds gay a lot of the time, and everyone just hops from bar to bar, and if you do happen to meet someone there, you can always say during the rest of the time that you're seeing that person that you met them at such-and-such a place, namedropping that fashionable luxury bar name.

(It really is this superficial rich gay white male obsession writ large onto bars, isn't it?)

So, he continued, because conventioneers tend to go to the gay neighborhood, you really got to build a casual work crowd, where people can come and relax and it's a place to regularly stop through.

When I got there, one person was leaving, and one person had just got there, and otherwise it was this (young) (gay) (white) male bartender singing a new song on karaoke every 2 minutes.

"I really like this atmosphere," I was like to the doorman, gesturing towards the staircase, from which you had to slip down through the (straight) (businessperson) piano bar.  "You've brought the forbidden back to gay."

Mostly, though, besides talking to him, I went in and sat there and intensively corrected some papers, and the bartender asked me to sing, but I said only after every 2 papers.

Then, after the first 2 papers, I sang the Carpenters' "Superstar", which the bartender didn't know, he was too young.

Later, too, after some other people came in, I broke down and asked to sing "Weekend in New England", which they didn't have, and so I ended up singing "Mandy", which he also didn't know, and which threw me from other times that I've sung it, since it's been a long time since I listened to the song, and I guess I never quite realized that after the bridge and the big swell the voice and instrumentals get out of synch and the voice has to power through with the instrumentals hitting offbeats.

Then, after another half a paper, I broke down and asked the bartender to put on Blondie's "Dreaming" or "Atomic", neither of which they had, but he offered that I could sing "Rapture", "Tide is High", or "One Way or Another," none of which I think would be that good for karaoke.

"A long time ago I tried singing 'Tide is High'," I was like, "But I really fucked it up."

"So this is your chance at redemption," he was like.

"Okay," I was like, "Put it on," and I discovered after the first verse that the song works pretty well if you drop it down an octave to your lower register and sing it in Teutonic lock-step with Debbie Harry's original vocal phrasings (if you try to play with the verses and sing your own phrasings, you die and just sound awful).

After that, I made myself go home, and arrived back there like 1am after the subway and then the bus and then walking 2 blocks across quiet sidewalks dotted with melted snow and absolutely no-one around, and as I was outside after I had checked my mailbox and was opening my front door, the door right next to that that goes to my downstairs stoner neighbor's apartment opened, and there he was, standing in his bathrobe, just like when he came up to my apartment the previous week to say I fucked up their vacuum after I used it and I had to tell him to clean the filter, it fills up fast.

"Hey man," he was like.

"Hey," I was like.  "Do I have to clean the vacuum or something?"

"No man," he was like, "Not that, I haven't checked the filter yet."

"Okay," I was like.

"Yeah," he was like, "I wanted to let you know, our band's going to be practicing ten tomorrow morning."

"That's no problem," I was like, "I have to leave for school by nine or so anyways."

"Cool man," and then he laughed.  "So if you hear us, that means you overslept."

"Yep," I was like, and then he asked me how my night was, and I began gushing about my karaoke discoveries and led off with my discovery about the beats post-bridge in Mandy.

"Wow, sounds jazzy," he was like.

. . .

...his band plays jazz, you see...