Library job thought:

Underneath the standard divisional name "bookstacks," all the library carts have numbers or letters, sometimes just one number or letter like "A" or "7", and at other times a couple like "17" or "AF".

Since kids nowadays use "af" as the abbreviation "as fuck" on social media like in the phrase "cool af," I always think that the "AF" cart is "bookstacks as fuck."

It's like, "Yeah man, bookstacks as fuck, wooooooooooo!".

A (Brit) on Milo Yiannopoulis (sp.?).

This week I had lunch with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair who I'm friends with).

Because of Milo Yiannopoulis (sp.?) being in the news, he came up in the conversation.

"He's a nasty piece of work," my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend was like.  "He belongs in the gossip columns, not being interviewed on television."

He then went on to say that he saw a clip of Bill Maher interviewing him, and Milo was able to say the most outlandish things without being challenged.

In any case, I found that perspective very interesting, that Britain might have a cultural location where those type of people are known and can be contained, whereas here they leak out into the news and are given more credence.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend also said that he doesn't believe the whole part about Milo's (black) boyfriend.

"He lies and says he's Jewish and then sometimes he's Catholic, and he's probably lying about this.  Who would date him?", he was like.

Then, he added, "And no-one's seen him."

"Maybe he sneaks into his house at night," I was like.

Tweeting like Italo Calvino.

The other Sunday I realized that I hadn't heard from my one friend who teaches modern (Czech) literature in a while, so I texted her to see how she was doing.

It turns out that she was getting over a cold, and so I texted back that I was getting over a cold too and had started to read Italo Calvino, and I wasn't into it all that much at first, but I wasn't sure if it was the cold or me.

To which she replied -

I think it's related to the cold but it's also maybe that Calvino had the same cold.

- to which I replied -

The words on your phone are creating an impression that this "I" your friend may have or may have just gotten over a cold.

- to which she replied -

Nice one, I!

- to which I replied -

I like Calvino texting.

- to which she replied -

He's so cute when he's texting.

. . .

LOL.

Two nightmares from the same night:

1) I'm in a stall in a large cavernous restroom that's massively tiled, and I have bits of yellowish vomit all over my shirt and pants.  I can't smell it, though I feel like I should be able to, and I take off my pants to go outside the stall and wash them off in the sink, but I'm afraid that men coming in from the formal event will come in and see me at the sink in my underwear and wonder what's happening, and so I wait in the stall, unsure what to do.

2) I keep rechecking stats on the rough hourly pay from my adjunct gig at the art school, and every time I think I've gotten it right at last, but then when I look at the figure again, I realize that I was massively lowballing it, and I'm fearful that if I don't get the calculation right before it gets into print, there will be an outcry and all my writing will be delegitimized.

. . .

And then, I WAKE UP.

New calendar for 2017.

My local grocery store was handing out free calendars when you went through checkout right before Christmas (though, oddly enough, I discovered that the calendar also had a single 2016 page for December so you could start using it right away).

Anyhow, I love that calendar.

It has stuff like Goya ads and is dual English/Spanish, and has a bunch of saints' days with abbreviations afterwards for which hispanic country they're celebrated in, e.g. -

St. Barbara's Day (CU) / [Spanish version of the words] (CU)

- to show you that it's St. Barbara's Day, and that Cubans celebrate it.

I love it how I know now when stuff like the Feast of Our Lady Guadalupe is happening, and some of my neighbors are probably celebrating it.

It's definitely a step up from my last (also free) calendar, which was a big giant shill for the local major league ballpark, and had pictures of people tonging out chicken strips from a buffet's metal Sterno tin in one of the stadium's deluxe lounges.

Trapped by tourists.

The other week I was downtown doing some sale and bargain shopping, and I was walking down by the one local TV studio that has a big glass window out front so that you can stop and watch the newscasters doing their job.

Across the street from that very spot, too, is an iconic theater sign of the city.

Anyhow, as I was walking, some people who were paused to take a picture across the street and get the theater sign in the frame waved me past, but then the very next group was some more people who were stopped to get a picture in front of the news studio, and I couldn't walk around the next group, since the photo taker was backed up against a huge fenced planting bed that kept you from going out into the street.

So, I stopped in between the two groups, and I was waiting for both of them to finish taking their pictures, the one across the street to get the theater sign in the frame and the other one in front of the news studio window.

In other words, I was trapped by tourists!

I wouldn't have minded waiting - honestly, it's not like it would have been *that* long - but then the person preparing to take the news studio photo noticed what was happening, and she laughed and stopped and waved me through.

Got a plant clipping, and 2 compliments.

My one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair who are friends of mine) has a lot of houseplants and has been growing a lot of clippings, and when I mentioned that I should get some houseplants for my new apartment, he said he had a really good plant that grew like wildfire in indirect sunlight, and he'd make me a clipping.

I picked it up on a night when I was taking public transportation home, and on the bus, this (black) (kind of crazy eyed) (middle-aged) (homeless?) guy was like, "Nice plant," and then started talking about plants and how they work.

Later, when I was waiting on the subway platform, a (black) (middle-aged) woman was like, "That's a nice-looking plant."

I guess the sight of me carrying around a plant clipping in a clear plastic jar so it didn't spill or get damaged was remarkable.