Islam-themed humor from my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend:

1) He says he saw a recent survey, and Muslims were the most hated group in the U.S.

"It's nice to be the best at something," he was like.

2) We pass a sign for a "Mum and Bulbs" sale, and he was like, "Oh look, like ISIS."

"Like what?", I was like.

"You know, they sell women into slavery," he was like.  "Mums."

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend on law students:

"They're all the same, you know.  This one's like 'I want to work for a big firm,' then that one's like 'I want to work for a bigger firm,' and then that one's like 'I want to work for the biggest firm.'  It's all very silly, you know."

An interesting side of bedbug treatments:

The other day I took some books out of my freezer where they'd been for over four days at below zero temps, and I put them on my bookshelf.

As I then sat at my table, I could see what looked like heavy steam roll off the books and down the shelf and down towards the floor, though the steam disappeared after about a foot or so.

It must have been something like evaporation or waves of cold, but heavy.

Another story of the British: One Chilean's impression.

The other weekend, a (Chilean) (lab science) friend and his (white) (American) girlfriend visited from the UK, where they're now both doing post-docs.

We went out for dinner in a group and then drinks, and just talked and talked and talked, including about the British.

"Honestly, every time I meet a British person, I think, 'How did they ever manage to get an empire and keep it together?'," I was like.

At that, my (Chilean) friend turned to his girlfriend and tapped her on the shoulder emotionally and was like, "SEE, what have I been saying?!".

He then said that British people are so much lazier than Americans, they never work till they get the work done, they just work till five o'clock, and on top of that they think they're better than everyone else for no apparent reason.

One story of the British: Cultural references.

The other weekend I was hanging out with my two (half British) (half Sudanese) friends and we had dinner and were vegging out and watching shit off Netflix, and when we weren't sure what to watch, I suggested the original Hairspray.

Neither of them really got it, and not only that, they didn't seem all that interested, either.

The pop culture representations just didn't speak to them, to the point where they weren't even interested in watching the re-enactments of crazy dances like the Madison.

Odd CO2 alarm.

The other week I was cooking a ton at my new apartment, and all of a sudden my smoke alarm starts going off.


I turn off the stove - oddly, nothing's burning - and then go into the bedroom.

As I look, it turns out that it's not signalling an alarm for smoke, but rather C02, so I immediately open the windows, and since the alarm was high up on the ceiling, I roll up a thick health insurance pamphlet that had just come in the mail, and I stand on my bed and push in the "TEST/SILENCE" button, but instead of going to test and resetting, the alarm just goes silent, and you can see the CO2 light continue to flash.


So, I go get a folding chair, carefully place it on my bed, and get up and unscrew the alarm.

Then, I take it down and take the battery out and put it back in to reset it, and then I hit the "TEST/SILENCE" button again, but now instead of going to silence, it actually runs through the test like the instructions on the back says it will.

Then, it never signals the presence of C02 again.

I wonder what's up with that...  I'm thinking the heat and moisture from the cooking may have caused a brief malfunction.

A Disturbing Dream of Skin Cancer.

The other week I dreamt:


I'm watching old TMZ red carpet footage of a (white) leggy (female) model/actress who recently died of skin cancer at too young an age, and me and the other person I'm watching with pause the tape, and right there on the top of her upper right breast is this huge misshapen mole the size of a half dollar, you can see because she's wearing a low-cut dress.


We both wonder how no-one noticed, it must have been there for so long, and it's so easy to see.

Two shopping cart conversations.

The other week when I went to go get a shopping cart, I didn't have a quarter in my pocket to insert and pull out the cart, so I waited till another customer came up so I could give them some loose change I had equalling twenty-five cents.


Almost immediately, this (younger middle-aged) (Chinese) woman pushing a cart and tugging along a young kid came up, and I asked her if I could use her cart.


She didn't speak English, so I showed her the change in my hand, and she began saying something in Chinese and nodding her head, and I dropped the dime, two nickels, and five pennies in her hand.


"Is that a penny?", the young boy then said to her, pulling at her coat.


Later, after I got out of the store, someone had just rechained their cart to the last one in the row, but without pushing the basket into the basket, so it was just this loosely connected cart sticking out and getting in everyone's way.


"What is that?", this (middle-aged) (white) woman asked me, as she was standing there looking at the cart and trying to figure out what was going on.


"I was just trying to figure that out myself," I was like, and I went to the other row to go push my cart in.