A conversation with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (2 of 2): Internet meme.

The other week my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend messaged me on Facebook:

do you think this is mean?

[picture of a fat woman asleep at a mall, that went viral]

at least now she has something to claim for fame 

. . .

It's so hard to tell sometimes when he's serious, and when his humor is dry.

I think in this instance he was being dry with his humor.

Also, British people are very random.

A conversation with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (1 of 2): Vehicle categorization.

For a class my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend was teaching, he had different cut-out pictures along a theme, and he had his students divide them into any categories of their own choosing, to see what categories they came up with.

(I've seen him do this before with pictures of different candies.)

For this exercise, he had pictures of many different vehicles, from jeeps to a Model T to a racecar to a toy car, and he was struck by how everyone grouped together the fire and police cars in a "Service" category, even though the only difference in make was a label on them.

"And I was surprised that the black students grouped together the fire car and police car, since in many communities, the police aren't necessarily there to serve you," he was like.

"Did you say that?", I was like, my jaw dropping.

"No," he was like, "But I thought it."

A night of jazz with my swinger friends.

So, the other week a newer friend who I know from unionization was having a mid-week jazz night under her pseudonym that she gigs under, and my swinger friends came along since they had all met at my viewing party for when I appeared on that one major network TV soap.

At first when I showed up, the first set had just ended and practically no-one was there except for the band and my jazz singer friend, so we caught up at the bar, just me and her, with her mostly telling me about this date she had recently been on with a guy who was legally blind.

"So that means I look airbrushed?", she asked him.

(He laughed.)

Later, just as the 2nd set was about to begin and my friend had left to go get ready, my swinger friends showed up, and so it was difficult to talk what with the music playing, though we did a bit here and there during the music nonetheless.

For example, the swinger lady was telling me about the freaky stuff some guys get into, like having her lie perfectly still during sex.

"Jeffrey Dahmer did that," I was like, and then I started on my whole thing about how I've never understood why he didn't find someone who would just tolerate his kink and lie still for him.

"He was kind of cute," my swinger lady friend shrugged.

Later, between the 2nd and 3rd set, me and the swinger guy were talking more, and it turns out he does scuba diving and even volunteers cleaning tanks at the local aquarium, and he was telling me a lot of stories about how trigger fish try to nip you and dolphins will imitate your scrubbing next to you and a beluga will just out of nowhere start hovering above you, and once even when a behind-the-scenes staff washing machine went funky and got fixed, the repairmen came back b/c it supposedly went on the fritz again, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it, and it took them a while to realize that the whales were almost perfectly imitating the sound of the broken washing machine.

Then, the music began again, and towards the end of the 3rd and last set, the swinger lady told me that the swinger guy finds my jazz singer friend kind of cute.

"Her likes her style," she was like.

"Yeah, I can see that," I was like.  "Somehow her top is so loose and flow-y, but she's packed into it."

"I know,", she was like.

As the set ended, she slid her husband some money, and he went to go get a drink and then they both went up to compliment my jazz singer friend on her performance.

Non-disclosure agreements for janitors.

The other Friday, I was talking with some janitors at the downtown building where the art school rents space.

I was telling them about my extra-ing gig, and one (Mexican-American) guy said that they've filmed shows before in the building's lobby, and all the regular staff has to sign non-disclosure agreements when they come in to work on those days.

An odd dream, of wax.

The other week, I dreamt -

I was standing in a corner in a large room with a high ceiling and concrete floors and odd substantial grey cloth dividers, and there was a wooden stand in the inside corner extending up into a very thin wooden dowel and surmounted by a very large chunk of wax like a huge crystal, towering at least above everyone's heads.

I knew that people bought bits of it to use, and I surreptitiously touched it without any of the handful of people around seeing, and then tried to nonchalantly smear some on my lips like Chapstick.

Later, I somehow got some more, and I tried using it in an unexpected way, to style my hair, pinching bits of it in to keep it in place, like that hairwax you can get.

Scrabble trickery.

The other week I was playing Scrabble with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, and when we went to pull letters to see who goes first, he tried with a wink to pass off a U as a C by holding it sideways.

Ominous weigh-in?:

The other week I weighed in after a work-out, and my weight came to 166.6.

I thought to myself, "It's almost like, I - 666!".